1 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Slielf._L50-i 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



>nf- 






CHANGE, 



THE WHISPER OF THE SPHINX. 



CHANGE 



THE WHISPER OF THE SPHINX. 



WILLIAM LEIGHTON, 

AUTHOR OF "THE SONS OF GODWIN," AND "AT THE COURT OF 
KING EDWIN." 






Change is the alphabet of history, 
The outer rind of every mystery, — 
Perplexing letters, who can read them well ? 
Or pluck each ripe fruit from encasing shell? 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
1879. 






Copyright, 1S78, by WiLLIAM LeiGHTON. 



CHANGE, 



I. 



A VOYAGER landed on a foreign shore 

Beholds with alien eyes all things around, 

Wondering observes the land and people o'er, 

And each strange thing his watchfulness hath found, 

But this most strange : that in the multitude 

Remembrance beams not forth from any eye, 

No face calls up a scene that he hath viewed. 

Nor recognition by one passer-by. 

Not like a stranger's may my voyaging be 

Here on life's busy paths and broad highway; 

But everything, familiar, nod to me ; 

And when dark mysteries with wonder play, 

Deep in the heart of marvels let me find 

Nature's response to sympathetic mind. 



CHANGE. 



A friendly land, this cheerful world of ours, 
If we will heed each kindly-whispered word 
That soft winds blow from perfumed banks of flowers, 
Or song in warbling throat of happy bird; 
Or if, when lovely landscapes would beguile 
Of weary cares and sorrows, we reply 
Unto the Beautiful with answering smile, 
And welcome that can charm away Annoy: 
And even Change, — before whose mystery 
I still would linger as a little boat 
Hugs the safe shore, nor dares a stormy sea 
Where troubled billows, white with perils, float, — 
Hath often kindness in its stern commands, 
And toucheth tenderly with giant hands. 

But no, I must not linger; while I wait 
The might of Change is on the subject world, 
And Joy and Pain obey the calls of Fate, 
And stars are fading, and the damp of mould 
Claims proudest things of earth. The mountains stand 
Not fast forever; like an armed host 
Bright ocean waves besiege the fortressed land ; 
The pride of nations is an idle boast. 



CHANGE. 



For Age creeps on them as it comes to all, 
And hides them in the dust. Ay, even now, 
While but a breathing pause I dare to call, 
I may not know if Time will that allow ; 
Yet, sure of an eternal government 
Above all change, I rest in calm content. 

I sing no warrior's wrath, no deeds of arms, 
Hero, or sage ; no such adventurous voyaging 
As from the shores of Thessaly set forth 
In the old mythical Past ; or when from Troy 
The wisest of the Greeks came wandering 
By Circe's isle and sweet Calypso's cave 
Back to his Ithaca; nor such sea-tossing 
As vexed ^neas, pious but perfidious, 
Sailing from Carthage with the beacon-fires 
Of burning Dido crimsoning sky and sea. 
I may not sing th' angelic hosts of heaven, 
Nor Eden-life, — that song- rincrs out as sweet, 
As grand, to-day as when its glorious verse 
Filled the blind poet's lips ; — nor a descent 
To shadowy worlds of bliss and punishment ; 
Virgil and Dante sit with laurelled brows 



8 CHANGE, 



At the black gates of Hades, and their songs 

Charm back all poesy would venture there. 

Why do I summon thus the memories 

Of famous verse to dwarf my later thoughts, 

And fling upon my page the mighty shadows 

Of epic song? I have no marshalled hosts 

Of noisy war to wage Homeric battles, 

No gods or goddesses in car of cloud 

To mingle loves or angers with mortality : 

Why conjure up their shapes? Than these, my 

theme 
Hath grander scope; I summon them to set 
Beside the olden giants, older Change ; 
To show how in the whirl of the remorseless years 
Gods, angels, heroes, poets, warriors — all 
Are trodden into dust, while Change lives on 
As gathering strength from every ruined thing, 
And making broad and broader, year on year. 
One universal empire. 'Tis a theme 
Greater than all the epics of the past ; 
But yet how poor my words can picture it : 
A giant overtopping the great heads 
Of mountains, drest in patchwork of my verse. 



CHANGE. 

O'er his smooth brow a summer shadow steals, 
As, hat in hand, the youth salutes gray age. 
Bending before a sober-visaged sage 
With his important question : *' Reverend sir. 
The frosts of age are white upon your head ; 
Your step is feeble, and your eye lacks fire ; 
You stand upon the threshold leaving now 
This house of life, this brilliant theatre. 
Where vital fire lights up the painted scenes, 
And flashes from bright footlights on the acts 
Of all the busy people of the drama : 
Pray tell me, sir, — you who have lived so long. 
And bear on furrowed brow the marks of thought,— 
What is the meaning of these bustling scenes ? 
What is there underneath these pageantries ? 
Can your maturity of age and wisdom 
Unlock the secret, make the hidden plain?" 

With head upraised, the sage his dim eyes turned 
On the blue mountain like a bank of cloud 
Piled in the hazy distance, on fair vales 
That sweetly smiled between, upon the town 
Where palaces looked down on hovels while decay 

A* 



CHANGE, 



Spotted each gilded roof, and feasting hung 

With vampire-clutch ahke on liigh and low, 

On busy streets where a tumultuous tide 

Of populace was moving noisily. 

"Why ask of me?" at length he slowly said; 

" Lift up your eyes ; behold how all things thrill 

With common act ! Yon mountain-peak afar, 

The sunlit vales that smile with loveliness, 

The architecture of this crowded town, 

The thronging multitudes that fill its streets. 

Are sending back an answer to your question ; 

Nor is it mystery, for Nature's voice 

Is hoarse with shouting down the ages, Change 1" 



CHANGE. II 



IL 



Time ! On my mantel in a crystal case 

With steady beat the shining pendulum swings - 

And is this time ? Upon my dial's face 

I read the legend every instant brings : 

The Future, Present, Past. Futurity, 

A dream ; for nothing is in that dim realm. 

The Present all too swiftly comes to me ; 

Its sudden shocks my startled senses whelm ; 

And when \ rally, 'tis to view the Past : 

But here indeed I find a solid land 

That is not dreams, a country anchored fast ;— 

Yet not for me : as slips the hour-glass sand 

Still am I hurried on while Memory wrings 

Her hands in woe : I fly on Time's broad wings. 

Dreamlike and vague, Imagination's vision 
Of Nature's birth floats over Nature's facts 



12 CHANGE, 

As springs the rainbow's arch above bright drops 

That build its ghttering bow, — dreamlike and vague, 

Yet on material facts as strongly pillared 

As some aerial dome is set on colonnades 

Of marble where each base hath sure foundation 

In the deep-anchored, rocky ribs of earth, — 

A vision picturing a history, 

A briciht refraction from material atoms 

Touched by the sunlight of man's intellect 

Till their bright track of color glows before him. 

And builds a shining bridge to bear his thought 

Upon its arch across the chasms of time. 

And man, whose waking dreams seem often shadows 

Of the great heart of ancient mystery 

Now opening to him, climbs th' aerial stair. 

Sets his small rule against the gleaming heavens. 

Measures their vastness, or writes confidently 

The daring visions brought by Thought and Fancy 

To toilincr Mind, the annals of his world. 

His world, what is it ? that extent abroad 

Outreaching sense can gather to his grasp. 

He sees about him shifting atoms group, 

And the groups cluster aggregating mass; 



CHANGE. 

Then dreams conceptive how in younger time, 

In the wide region of the unconfined, 

Nebulous matter gathered up in space, 

Gases condensing grew to soHd forms 

Shaping by laws inherent into orbs, — 

Stars, suns, earths, planets, and their satellites. 

Seeking to know the origin of all. 

The key of Nature's puzzling intricacy, 

The clue upleading to a Primal Force, 

The might propelling atoms in their race 

Through the illimitable paths of stars. 

He finds philosophy of no avail ; 

In Nature's elements his utmost reach ; 

And the Beyond, — if he so far may dare, — 

A fabulous country dim in hazy distance, 

Fancy's wide realm in which Imagination 

Builds bright ideals, yet each but the reflection 

Of a reality's more sober shape. 

Looking abroad for Nature's moving powers. 

He only grasps results as atoms fly; 

Finds Change the rule of all created things. 

The doom of every wandering molecule. 

The history of planets and of suns, 



14 CHANGE. 

The ripple under which there stirs a law, 
The burning car on which a meteor rides. 

Or whether Change or Time was elder born, 
Or of one birth, it boots not to conjecture; 
Or if they be the same, or different aspects 
Of the great scheme of universal progress, 
Not much imports. Wherever Change appears 
He is so yoked to his companion, Time, 
That habit blends the comrades into one. 
As daylight to our eyes, Time to our thoughts 
Is a familiar; yet this daily theme, 
This common, household word, is but a symbol 
Set up to represent a larger thing 
Than limited thought hath breadth to comprehend ; 
A wise device by which we think to mark 
With careful numbers all the flying scenes 
That crowd successive on the narrow stage 
Of our domain, the starlit universe ; 
A measure, — happy inspiration! — made 
For the immeasurable. Ah, vain man. 
How dare he seek to grasp so great a thing ! 
He cannot hope to give the boundless bounds, 



CHANGE. IS 



Nor mark the margins of eternity! 
Even Imagination, though it rise 
A higher flight than Pegasus e'er soared, 
Feels weary tremors stay its bold, broad wings 
Ere yet is reached the ancient shore of Time ; 
Content at last to find some distant spot 
Beyond the morning of man's memory 
Where it may set, forsooth, its outmost line, 
A measure only of conditioned reach. 
Anticipation, sweeping through the years 
Of coming time and eons yet to be. 
Hath no prophetic power or wizard forecast 
In the conceptive chambers of the brain 
To tell the end of Time. 

No star of heaven 
Was shining in the cold extent of space 
When Time was born, to be its natal light ; 
And when Time ends, the all-unnumbered host 
Of gleaming lights that flash and glimmer forth 
Upon this little world, — ay ! the white walls 
Of overarching skies, the heaven's star- masonry 
Roofed grandly over us, — will, with our world, 
Have filled their use, grown cold, and dull, and black, 



1 6 " CHANGE. 



And died a nameless, unrecorded death. 
Time and the stars ! — the ocean and a drop ! — 
The sea-shore and a single grain of sand! — 
To gauge eternity by shine of stars 
Were burning candles to light up the sun. 

Days, months, years, centuries, are woven links 
Of which an endless chain is ever made; 
Our dear To-day, the last and nearest one, 
Joined to the infinite, our little Now. 
One end supported by — we know not what, 
Beyond the limit where far-darting thought 
Though plumed with fancies fails its baffled flight, 
The chain of Time is hung; down-reaching us 
Through the mysterious depths of Age antique. 
Out of the darkness of an ancient night 
Hang pendant ages lost in ebon depths 
As they recede, but on the latest link 
Catching the dazzling sunlight of the Present, — 
One single spot amid infinitudes. 
One light thus glimmering in immensity 
That walls it round about, and hangs above, 
Waiting the flaming spark to pale and die; 



CHANGE, 17 



While, clustering round that light, its fleeting day, 

And bathing fragile lives in its sweet beams, 

And dreaming this To-day, the one dear thing 

For which primeval darkness was pushed back, 

And Time's long chain thus kindly forged and hung, 

Is man's weak race that labors, laughs, and weeps. 

Or, stirred by busy fancies, builds a stair 

Of bright imagination's gossamer 

Far up the chain on which its day depends. 

So round a candle flits an insect brood 

Blind in its flickering glare to all beside. 

Oft scorching thin-spun wings in touch of flame, 

But yet returning to the dazzling peril, 

Happy to spend a life of briefest span 

Buzzing about a smoking luminary, 

The only refuge from surrounding night. 

Time, thou art clothed with Mystery's strange awe ! 
From cloudy gates in mythic fable hid 
Thou hast come forth ; before thee broadly stretch 
Interminable galleries through which 
Thy armies march ! We hear the noisy din. 
The shouts and trampling of life's multitudes 



1 8 CHANGE, 

With which our voices mingle and are lost. 

We look behind and see the scattered wrecks 

Of age on age along the ruined Past 

Until the lines of far perspective touch, 

And all beyond is merged in misty points, 

The periods of our knowledge — in advance, 

And a great wall of darkness densely black 

Moves as we move, but hides the forward country, 

To which we go, from our impatient eyes — 

Around, and the quick hurry of the march 

Is seen on all: one sings rejoicing songs, 

Another weeps, but all with even step 

Keep pace to the great march ; or failing so, 

Are left dead wrecks upon the track of years — 

Dead wrecks on which with back-turned eyes we look 

Awhile regretful ; but the jostle soon, 

And distance, break our fervent sorrowing 

As the fierce hurry of the noisy Present 

Drowns with its clamor low-voiced Memory. 

From dreamless slumber in the silent land 
Of embryos come forth the new, swift years, 
Laden with destinies of worlds and men. 



CHANGE. 19 



Throw down their burdens in the flying Present, 
Then leap into the Past. Dim twilight shades 
Cast lingering lustre round each flitting form, 
But darken soon into one normal night 
As close the black, funereal curtains round 
A perished age, — save where, faint glimmering 
Like an uncertain starlight. Memory's rays 
Glance twinkling down amid the night of years ; 
But pierce not deepest shadows that lie thick 
On far-ofl' eras, like the black of pines 
In a night-landscape, hiding all beyond. 
While nearer, half-revealed in fitful light, 
The valley lies, and sheen of winding stream 
Like silver ribbon shining from its fringe 
Of birchen clumps, o'er which the starlight flings 
Mysterious charms of fairy witchery. 



CHANGE. 



III. 

How shall I paint thy presence, Memory ? 

Unto my thought thou seem'st a stately queen 

Clothed in the purple robes of royalty: 

Upon thy broad, fair brow a look serene, 

And in thy eyes a wealth of history ; 

One hand upraised impatient word would stay, 

And lips seen struggling with some mystery : 

Over thy face expression's quickening play 

Flashes as brightly as a sunbeam's ray; 

But often sad, and sometimes melancholy. 

Past pleasures live anew in thy sweet sorcery ; 

Yet art thou too an avenger, and thy eye 

Hath queenly menace to the heart of guile, 

Proclaiming what scared guilt would hide the while. 

O Memory, let me not with too faint praise 
Slander the greatness of thy ministry ! 



CHANGE. 21 



Without thee man had been as poor a thing 

As the bhnd worm, his type of feebleness. 

Thou art the soul's awakening element, 

The germ of intellect from which hath come 

Through many ages all our mental growth. 

Not in maturity, — as from Jove's head 

The wise Athena sprung, — came forth mankind; 

But struggling upward in a toilful path 

From lower levels. In that lowest age, 

When helpless in the storm of elements 

Man first essayed to guide life's troubled voyage 

With wiser thought than native savagery. 

The feeble rays of unripe Memory 

Shone out alone to light th' uncertain way; 

But in their beams his embryotic mind. 

Thrilled with awaking powers, burst the dull husks 

Of an obscuring ignorance, and grew 

Up to the light, threw out each broader thought 

As the vine flings long tendrils, till at length. 

Grown up to pride of vain maturity. 

He deems the patient Memory little part 

Of present strength, and would degrade her rank 

From guide and counsellor to toiling slave. 



22 CHANGE. 



With Memory's talisman we boldly press 
Upon the track of the all-conqueror, Time, 
Snatch for an instant from his victories 
A trophy; but, alas, how soon to yield 
It back, and learn we have not power to give 
New life to his dead victims, nor to stay 
A single file of all his countless host 
That sweeps unhalting in eternal march. 
While muffled music rings along the years 
With funeral measure, and a spectral flag, 
Emblazoned Change, floats o'er the crowded ranks, 
And waves the triumphs of the tyrant-king! 

But Memory hath a conjuror's wizard power 
To bring for a charmed moment back again, 
And rehabilitate with life, the Past, — 
The Past as painted on the myriad foldings 
And tapestry of brain by artist hands 
Of toiling elves that fill the chambered dome 
Of thought with pictures numberless, but dim 
And overhung till Memory draws the curtain, 
And floods with gay or sombre light each scene. 
Then as by magic every shape takes life, 



CHANGE. 23 



And in a marvellous vision, scene by scene, 

Appears life's drama ; nor a picture now, 

For from the canvas every puppet leaps 

To act his part of anger, sorrow, joy, 

As it is written in the book of life. 

A storm of recollection stirs the heart ; 

Again we thrill as we were thrilled of yore 

By quick pulsation of the thronging passions,-— 

By Love, Hope, Fear, Pride, Anger, Jealousy, 

Ambition, and Regret — by all the host 

Of warrior passions, demons of dear sense, 

And the angelic spirits of our virtues, 

That throng tumultuous in the human heart, 

Crowding its narrow gates and crooked halls 

With mingled lines of marshalled combatants 

Who win for us our grandest battle-fields, 

Or stain the soul with blackness of defeat. 

Or memories come, each other following, 
Like the long swell of waves on summer seas, 
Breaking in murmuring ripples at our feet; 
But while we muse, and lose ourselves in visions 
Of former happiness, the waves grow black. 



24 CHANGE. 

Their gentle murmurs changed to angry roar, 
As the charmed sea chafes on its sounding shore ; 
And back upon us sweeps the frightful storm 
That wrecked, perhaps, a fondly cherished hope. 
Our pensive thoughts would linger with the hours 
Friendship hath consecrated with its wealth 
Of generous sympathy and noble help, 
Or Love, with tenderer touch, made more than 

hallowed, 
Stilling the heart's too passionate pulsations 
To measures of remembered happiness. 
But like a spectre on such gentle musing 
May come the cruel shape of Sin to point 
Where stand, unmasked of every specious doubt 
The Present heaped upon them, our ill deeds : 
And what we would forget comes up again 
Out of the Past the brighter from immersion 
In Time's dead waves that will not be a Lethe. 
Through the hot flood-gates of the conscious 

heart, 
Opened by busy hands of wakeful Memories, 
Pour past emotions ; and our acts spring forth 
On this swift-moving flood, their own avengers, 



25 



CHANGE. 

Or bringing- the returns a busy Present 
May not have yielded to each modest virtue. 



Or Memory may adorn her fairest scenes 
With gay imaginations till they mock 
Alcina's gardens and the sweet delights 
That tempted to her snares the paladin. 
As skilful artist, by his coloring, throws 
On the broad map of field, and wood, and stream, 
So delicate charms that Nature is transformed 
To something nobler or more sweet, so Memory, 
With bright-eyed Fancy, can transform the Past. 
But charms of Contemplation have been sung 
In choicer numbers than may grace my page, 
Then let me hasten on amid the whirl 
Of my great theme ; yet ere I leave thy name, 
O grateful Memory ! I would essay 
To mark th' uncertain limits of thy realm, 
Tell how thy cloudy, visionary shores 
Touch on the life-thrilled province of the Present. 

Remembrance brings a train of captive facts 

Within the pale of Judgment; builds a base 
B 3 



26 CHANGE. 



On which the intellect may set its structures, 

Or Fancy rear her quaintly-fashioned shapes ; 

Hands down from predecessors heritage 

Of science, literature, and mental toil ; 

Presents the broad experience of the Past 

Rigid in changeless lines of immobility 

By which to shape the formless, plastic Present, 

As the great volumes of the Past are filled 

With the unchanging print of actions done. 

We turn a page or two and read the while 

Our acts are written there. We fain would change 

Or blot the words where Folly's reckless touch, 

Or secret or acknowledged sin, has set 

Its soiling marks on the accusing page ; 

But find, alas ! the Past cannot be changed. 

In ancient times they wrote on leaves of brass 

Or golden tables some important fact ; 

And in our day we cut the granite's face. 

Or model iron into pictured shapes. 

In the vain hope to tell a future age 

Our thoughts or acts, successes or mishaps. 

The tooth of rust will gnaw the giant limbs 

Of our Colossus, and our Sphinx may hide 



CHANGE. 27 



In shattered features what we bid her tell ; 

Nor leaves of brass, nor chiselled shapes of stone, 

Will long endure ; each may be falsified ; 

But Fact fails not because the record dies, 

Nor shifts from ill to good though sculptures tell 

In deep-cut letters monumental lies. 

While Memory yields a never-ceasing store 
Of recollections, the great power to act 
Is vested in each rapidly flying instant, 
So brief a space no measure marks its breadth. 
Into this breathless moment leaps a thought, 
And prompts the deed that cannot be undone. 
And so we set our marks along the lines 
Of circumstance, so grasp impending facts, 
So do the deeds that bring us honor, shame. 
Our best of happiness, or worst regret. 
Upon the future we may speculate ; 
In memory dwell upon the dreamy past ; 
One flitting instant only is our own : 
The Present sets a seal on every act 
Will stand unbroken to eternity. 



28 CHANGE. 



IV. 



How many an eye, O burning lamps of night, 

Hath sadly looked upon your distant spheres 

In hope, calm stars, to win of your sweet light 

One blessed ray to banish haunting fears ! — 

Calm stars? Ah, no ! In every glancing ray 

That glimmers forth now pale, now strangely bright, 

Methinks I see its fitful flash betray 

A demon dancing in the twinkling light, — 

The demon. Change ; and skies are not serene ; 

Their silent beauty is a friendly guile, 

False, for those lights that sweetly, softly beam 

Are monsters roaring in a fierce turmoil : 

Yet each huge orb, as through wild change it flies, 

With peaceful beauty shimmers in our skies. 

When by the action of Primeval Force 
Creation was ; when laws began to move 
The thinnest forms of matter in wide space 



CHANGE. 29 

That thrilled with impulse of awaking Nature ; 

When out of nothing, as from sleep, awoke 

The law-poised atoms, — woke to spin and fly 

Unresting ever in the countless years, 

Pushed on as if across infinity; 

When, closing up, the neighbor elements 

Together drew to social union driven, 

And definite shape, by instinct of that force 

That wrought the contour of each balanced orb, 

And framed the architecture of the skies ; 

Then Change had its beginning : nor hath known 

Leisure or stay since that eventful hour; 

But, like a vast and restless phantom of Fate 

Hung over the subjected universe, 

Hath suffered no vexed atom to have rest. 

A phantom of Fate ? if so, perhaps a purpose, 

Not all concealed, is in the cruel whirl 

Of Change, and every phase is healthful growth 

To a determined end. But let us pause, 

And listen to the marvellous din of movement ; 

Behold the figures shift, and blend, and fade ; 

Then, if we will, their ultimate meanings guess. 

And seek the clue through this bewildering maze. 



30 CHANGE. 



The ruler of our system, — to whose heart 
The mystic ties of gravitation bind us ; 
About whose kingly orb in circling paths 
Journey his planetary family of worlds 
Cherished and warmed by life-bestowing beams, 
And strong upheld ; — is not exempt from Change. 
The patient watcher at the telescope 
Sees on the sun's bright orb huge, graven marks 
That come and go, pits deep and inky black 
Changing their shapes, and drifting o'er his face — 
Upon his photosphere the impress of force, 
The boiling up of incandescent flames. 
Sudden combustions darting into space 
Thousands of leagues, falling again like rain 
To be absorbed into his molten breast, 
Nor to repose, for the tumultuous throes 
Which agitate that monstrous bosom cast them 

forth 
High-hurled as shot from angry crater-mouths. 
Mountains of flaming hydrogen arise, 
Each vaster than a hundred earths like ours. 
Showing like saw-teeth on his mighty disk ; 
And sink, and rise again, fringing his edge 



CHANGE. 2>^ 



With bright corona, many-tinted fires, . 
Painting fierce action and unresting Change. 
Apparent motions of the starry host 
Have taught sky-gazers that the sun stays not 
Fixed on his fiery centre to one spot 
Immovable amid th' unceasing whirl; 
But that across the boundless sea of space 
His system journeys toward flashing deeps 
Alive with star-lights ; yet between whose fires 
Open vast galleries for his great march. 
While still the star-deeps brightly flash beyond, 
Nor wait his coming; but each sphere, propelled 
On orbit large, sweeps on its silent path, — 
Silent to us because unmeasured depths 
Muffle the roar of monstrous chariot-wheels 
And frightful clamor of each stellar flight; — 
While all the lines of labyrinthian track, 
Traced upon ether by the flight of stars. 
The broad handwriting of the heavenly host, 
Are weird, mysterious cryptograms of Change. 

As the sun changeth, Earth, his satellite, 
By smaller marks reveals the same great hand 



32 CHANGE, 



Whose touch perturbs the blazing king of day. 

How manifold the changes of the earth 

Since it was gathered up amid the heavens, 

An infant world, and held in young Time's lap ! — 

But wherefore young? Time then perchance was 

old 
When moving inward through impregnate space, 
Nebulous cloudlings, from their ether homes, 
Drew them together to create a world 
Of much attenuated elements 

And gases thin ; or when, much wrought by force, 
And fashioned into being, this new world — 
A future home of animated life, 
A garden-spot for man to cultivate, 
A strange entanglement of many laws — 
Joined the great march of planetary spheres, 
Sailed in determined path along the heavens. 
But Time, grim nurse, took no more heed of it 
Than doth the sea of some bright-tinted shell 
Rolled up by murmuring tides on diamond beach, 
And flashing with gay brilliance as each wave 
Breaks on its lustrous curves in sparkling drops 
That cannot quench the gleaming opal fire. 



CHANGE, 33 



Ever from hour of her nativity 
Hath restless Change pursued swift-flitting shapes 
Whirled round about the Earth's rotundity. 
White flaming fires condensed to solid mass 
Till round her poles long, sunless winters freeze : 
The cooling crust, uptorn by inward throes 
That greatly moved her heaving, fervent breast, 
Hath pierced the sky with cloud-capped mountain- 
chains : 
The seas have left their old, accustomed beds 
To pour their floods upon the sinking land : 
From out the deepest caves in ocean depths 
Have islands sprung that, buttressed 'gainst the 

sea, 
Lift to sweet light great mountains long submerged, 
And now rejoice to catch on kindling peaks 
The glowing heralds of each new day's dawn : 
Sea-grottos where the shark once wooed his love, 
Deep under the blue tops of curling waves, 
Are now green valleys where the patient cow 
Chews the sweet grasses, and Arcadia smiles 
While Summer airs, bucolic idyls, sing. 



34 CHANGE. 

So Change transmutes the varying forms of earth 
With a strange alchemy. The troubled atoms 
Hurry at call of weird affinities, 
Or by the might of a subjecting stroke, 
To new alliances as brief as new ; 
For scarcely are they joined ere they dissolve. 
While the great doom of matter seems to be 
A ceaseless agony of dissolution 
And shifting shape ; and life and death are names 
Of phases in the flitting cycles of Change. 
The outward forms of things inanimate, 
As Time goes on, are wrought by constant powers 
Shaping the contour of the spherical Earth, 
Rounding with equal care the rain-drop's globe, 
Dispersing it in so small particles 
It paints the sky with floating tints of beauty, 
Till Nature rounds again its crystal sphere ^^ 
To launch it forth at an electric signal 
From the low bank of black and angry clouds. 
Form dies to give new birth ; successive changes 
Clasp each the next, a closely-woven chain. 
The animation of organic structure 
A brief course runs through phases numberless 



CHANGE. 35 



To stop abruptly at the change of death. 

No shape of earth so firm but at the touch 

Of wizard Change, as by the magic stroke 

Of an enchanter's wand, it melts away. 

Resistless might is in this demon hand 

To crush together, or to rend apart, 

The much-vexed matter. Yet each atomy 

Hath an undying life : no change can mar 

Its substance, or destroy its entity. 

Death is th' inevitable act of laws ; 

But when decay dissolves a concrete form, 

Or quicker rupture strikes organic life, 

The death of one foretells another's birch, 

From Phcenix-pyre undying matter springs, 

Its atoms grouped anew to tint and shape, — 

Death but the withered skin a serpent sheds, 

The recollection of a perished form. 

So from its broken chrysalis comes forth 

The painted moth to mock the hues of sunshine. 

And flutter brightly o'er its empty case. 

The works of man sink crumbling back to dust, 
From which with painful toil he raised them up : 



36 CHANGE. 

The works of Nature, stronger built and vast, 

Share the same fate : resolve, and fall, and change. 

The highest Alp that lifts its giant mass 

Above the clouds, stability's vain type, 

Is beat by storms, and gnawed by countless years, 

Till, piece by piece, wild torrents drag it down, 

Or wilder winds its fragments launch in air. 

Man sees the myriad-aged mountains sink. 

But scarce can stay to moralize thereon ; 

For while he thinks he groweth old, himself; 

Feels his own atoms fail ; writes hastily 

** Life's lesson's change !" — drops wearily his pen, 

And points the sentence with the stop of death. 

Nor man alone, but all organic forms 
Of loose material that Dame Nature builds 
Into prolific life, the circuit make 
Of birth, maturity, decay, and death. 
The countless tribes of animated things 
That fondly cling to Earth's maternal breast, 
Die on the lap in which they had their birth ; 
While vegetation's mantle, wrapped around 
The mother of all organisms, is green, 



CHANGE, 37 



Profuse, luxuriant, ripe, then fades, and falls 
In withered piles of decomposing death, 
Closing a circuit of organic change ; 
And leaving Earth, the nourisher, stripped of all, 
To shiver with bared bosom at the wrath 
Of Winter till young Spring with touch of sun- 
shine 
Revive her, and a wealth of life leap forth 
From her prolific lap, — the miracle 
Of each new year, — as it so oft hath done. 

The thoughtful student, poring o'er the past, 
Can read on rock-bound ribs of Earth her story : 
Broad glacier-marks, the fossil shell and leaf. 
Are each an illustration of past time, 
A pictured truth in Nature's book of years ; 
While every order of successive layers 
And incrustations, or their wild disorder 
Where some fierce epoch tossed the level ruins 
In broken slopes, or piled on edge the strata 
Thousands of calmer years combined to build, 
Are records how Earth's changing shapes have 
moved, 

4 



38 CHANGE. 



Th' engraven annals of the centuries, 

Teaching his mind the broad historic truth 

That Nature, yielding to the force of laws 

As multitudinous as atomies. 

Hath been so carefully fashioned through all time 

By this unceasing Change, that what we see 

And what we are, this all-important Present, 

Is but the outgrowth of the ended years. 

And every period of the wondrous Past 

Hath marvellously pointed down to us 

As we point onward to a coming Future. 

Despite of time, a close relationship 

Exists between the first created germ 

And the last life prolific Earth hath borne. 

His mind goes backward from this elder day, 
And wanders out amid the storied Past : 
Preadamitic visions rise before him. 
The ghostly images of former times. 
He sees the gloomy foliage of fern-forests 
Dark overhead, enormous stems and fronds. 
As of a giant world, wave in the wind. 
And roar as their high branches swing and chafe. 



CHANGE. 39 



His breath is stifled by the hot earth's reek ; 

Rank, sulphurous fumes are stinging in his nostrils ; 

Pushing among the mighty stems and fallen ferns, 

Or splashing noisily in vaporous seas, 

Move frightful forms of animated life, 

The saurian and the monstrous pachyderm, — 

These hideous creatures scare away the vision, 

And, when he dreams again, the time is changed 

Into a later age, the Age of Frost. 

Now bright before him the cold glaciers shine. 

And one long winter wraps the hapless w^orld — 

A frozen world, — white cliffs hang o'er ravines 

Of the same ghastly hue, save where the flashing 

Of weird auroras gleams along the snows, 

Painting their desolation with the tints 

Of strange diablery. Adown the sides 

Of the precipitous hills no torrents dash ; 

No purple banks of cloud sail in the sky; 

Water exists but in its crystal forms. 

In phantom snow-wreaths flung o'er hills of ice. 

No pine-trees skirt the mountain's gleaming heights, 

No oak-clumps in the valleys, — all is bare : 

Even the shadows, with their spectral gloom, 



40 CHANGE. 



Bring no relief to pained and dazzled eyes. 
It is a dead world in a frozen shroud. 
Shivering he drives away the dreary picture, 
Nor dares to summon up another age 
Lest yet more horrid visions should appear. 



CHANGE. 41 



V. 



Old mother, Earth, so great thy family, 

Small is the share of love thou giv'st to one. 

Out of thy teeming, ripe fecundity 

Brood after brood thy countless children come. 

Lo, I, thy son, to thy maternity 

Make my appeal ! Hast thou a mother's heart ? 

Or art thou callous to thy offspring's cry? 

In human loves perhaps thou hast no part, 

And all of tenderness to us deny. 

Hath Summer's sunshine no beguiling art 

To draw thy heart to all the host that cling 

To thee ? Ah, Mother Earth, if thou dost know 

What joy the throbs of sweet affection bring. 

Thou can'st not then life's crowning bliss forego ! 

What changes yet remain, O Earth ? what fate, 
What fortunes, darkling in the future, wait 
4* 



42 CHANGE. 

To make thy age more noble tlian the Past ? 

Or to extinguish all thy ancient honors ? 

O dull, insensible, unloving Earth ! 

Whom, while you drag our climbing spirits down, 

Compelling us to yield to that gross law 

By which thou drawest to thy own dull self 

All matter kindred in its birth with thee, 

We still must love; for with our dearest hopes, 

Our largest thoughts, our loves, our happiness. 

There mingles what is so alHed to thee 

We dare not learn how close the kinship lies ! — 

What changes yet remain ? As it hath been 

Throughout the Past, so must the Future be ; 

And still new phases dawn. 

There was no sage 
In thy first hour to plot a horoscope 
From the portents of the bright, watchful host 
Of sister orbs that shone upon thy birth. 
If we would read thy fate, it must be found 
Shadowed in figures of successive change 
Upon the Past, and every phase a cipher 
In which is written shunless destiny. 



CHANGE. 43 

But our best science, groping in the dark, 

Can only chance upon some plainer parts 

Of a great scheme, which we would fain piece out, 

Or wisely build with broad philosophy; 

But find our largest plans too small to reach 

Beyond ourselves, while stretching far away 

Are vast infinities, within whose depths 

Our grandest figures sink and disappear. 

Will still conserving laws hold in firm grasp 
Thee and thy fortunes? or will Change unloose 
Thy bonded matter? bid freed elements 
Fly off to join them with the neighbor orbs? 
Or flit, blind meteors, rayless in the path 
Of a wrecked world ? Or will the hour arrive 
When, fading into nothing, vanishing 
Like dream forgotten with the morning sun, 
Thou wilt be lost, at once plucked out of space, 
Engulfed in darkness like a sinking ship : 
No trace remaining in the empty void 
To bear the record, There was once a world ? 
The trembling heart cries out, " This cannot be 1" 
Forgetting that a greater wonder was 



44 CHANGE. 



When through the slumbering halls of vacancy 
The first call rang that broke eternal silence, 
And filled infinity with countless worlds. 

Ask we of Science what the years will bring 
To Mother Earth ? she, the inflexible, 
Can build from prophet-shadows of the Past 
The substance of a corresponding Future. 
There is no void : the vast profound of space 
Is filled with ether; our terrestrial ship 
Cuts this thin substance as a steamer cuts 
With iron prow the denser ocean waves : * 
Plousfhs throucrh a medium so attenuate 
Our envelope of thin, encircling air 
Strikes it as would a sphere of hardest steel 
That dilute air. Yet this embodiment 
Quivers elastic with the waves of light 
And its companion, heat ; doubtless contains 
In its mysterious mxass the agencies 
Of gravitation and electric force ; 
Within its well-knit substance firmly holds 
The visible bodies of the universe ; 
And matter is complete, one great machine 



CHANGE. 45 



Endless and voidless, simple and complex, 

Throbbing as if endued with conscious life, 

One organism built of many parts, 

Of which our globe is but a molecule. 

This monstrous creature, framed without the bounds 

Of space and time, joins in its entity 

The sum of all : its tireless energy 

Compels all movement with exhaustless force : 

Translation, heat, light, organism, life. 

Its varied forms of action. But our Earth, 

The molecule, the atom of this thing, — 

Leaving the whole to watch a little part, — 

What is the atom's fate? The energy, 

Propelling now our globe through ether-depths, 

Will be resolved by variable degrees 

Into the form of heat. The viewless path, 

On which we move, obstructs our chariot-wheels ; 

The fires of friction slowly burn up force ; 

Out of the ether fairy hands are stretched 

To stay our journey ; nor are stretched in vain ; 

Still we go on, as heedless of all this, 

But in a smaller course. The time must come — ■ 

Though all our figures work not out the date — • 



46 CHANGE. 



When these faint frictions will so change our march 

That solar gravity, preponderant, 

Will draw by its centripetal constraint 

Our Earth, in lessening circles spinning round. 

Into the fervor of its fierce embrace, 

Mingling our little with its mighty mass ; 

The fused Earth-molecule dissolved in fire. 

It is but working the well-ordered plan 
That gathered up the nebulae in space ; 
Fashioned the floating matter into orbs ; 
Drew in those orbs to merge them into suns; 
To hurl in frightful contact their huge globes, 
Transmuting speed in heat. In that mad hour 
When all the movement of unnumbered years 
Is loosed in flame, a vast expansive force, 
Developed of diffusive power of heat. 
May hurl dissevered matter back again 
Into the limitless from whence it came 
By circling journeys of the ended cycle. 
Then the thin nebulae will fill ao;ain 
The long deserted deeps of ether space, 
And the new Cycle, leaping into birth 



CHANGE. 



47 



From a dead brother's grave, commence its march, 

Primordial atoms gathering into mass 

To fashion worlds within the pregnant skies. 



So may we follow an imagined plan, 
Working from laws whose secrets half-disclosed 
Tempt us to guess at what remains unlearned, 
Yet doubtful of our steps : for it may chance 
That while we build anew the scheme of things, 
What we yet know, may bear to the unknown 
Too small proportion, and our architecture. 
Set on a false foundation, slip away 
Like a fair city swallowed by the Earth 
That in volcanic rupture widely gapes. 
Often our best imaginings appear, 
In dawning light of new discovery. 
False as fantastic figures of a dream. 
Futile as prophecy of raving Madness 
That dresses every wild and whirling fancy 
In the material garb of sober fact. 



48 CHANGE. 



VI. 



What glimmers, Ocean, in thy bosom bright? 
Is starlight glassed upon thy trembling waves ? 
Methinks you whisper " Shipwreck" to the Night, 
And count lost fleets that rot in thy deep caves ! 
O say not, sailor, 'tis an insect swarm 
That fills the sea with strangely shining life ! 
Here are weird presages of sudden storm ; 
These spectral fires forebode a coming strife. 
Ah, sailor, tell me not the sea's strange glow 
Hath natural cause ! I read in dancing lights 
That leap and flicker in the waves below, 
A legend written by the ocean-sprites, — 
A legend full of wonders sad and strange, 
And pitiful disasters of sea-change. 

Blue Ocean shouts in noisy thunderings 
Or whispers in low murmurings, of change : 



CHANGE. 49 



Nor ever rests ; but moves from ebb to flood, 

From flood to ebb, — a monster's half- day pulse. 

By light winds fanned, its curling ripples smile ; 

By tempests tossed, its billows threat the sky. 

A fickle element, its smiles deceive. 

And hungry waters swallow the deceived — 

A type and agent of capricious change, — 

The lovely bosom of tranquillity, — 

Marvel of majesty and Nature's might, — 

The level plain on which rich Commerce floats, — 

A boiling whirlpool to engulf whole fleets. 

Regardless of old Ocean's smiles or frowns, 
His smooth tranquillity or white-capped rage, 
A stately steamship crosses the broad sea, 
Day after day swift-sailing into the East 
Upon the oft-cut track of many keels 
And well-known path. Her sails shine white above 
The deep blue waves like broad and gleaming wings 
Of the sea-cradled albatross ; or w^hen, — 
Out of the East head-winds adversely blowing, 
Or dropping to a calm, — with folded sails, 
Still hurrying on her course with tremulous thrill 
c 5 



50 CHANGE. 

Like pulse of life at each strong engine-stroke, 
She seems some mighty monster of the deep 
With breath of smoke polluting air above, 
And iron fins disturbing seas below 
That backward gleam along her course for miles, 
A foaming, eddying serpent-track. 

The restless belt of the Atlantic waves 
Is traversed, and a few safe hours will place 
The ocean-voyagers in their destined port. 
'Tis night upon the sea; mingling with dreams 
That hover over sleepers in the ship, 
The turbulent waves join their unceasing din. 
The deep-toned voices of the ocean swell 
Chanting the mighty anthem of the sea — 
Ill-fated Schiller, 'tis thy dirge they sing ! 
Behold above the tossing waves a light ! 
A ship at sea ? No ! listen to the roar : 
It is the sound of breakers. Ah, too late 
Their dreadful warning came ! A heavy crash 
As if the earth upon its orbit stopped, 
A frightful, stunning pause. The mountain waves 
Rolled high above, — a moment hung, — then fell. 



CHANGE. 51 



The boasted work of man's skilled handicraft 

Crushed like a nutshell in the sea's fierce might, 

And when the waves rolled back it lay a wreck. 

Hoist out the boats ! — no boat could swim the surge 

Of that tumultuous sea. The shattered masts 

Fall crashing o'er the side ; the waves leap up 

To clutch them with a thousand curling hands 

Of giant strength ; and, howling, bear them off 

To tear in pieces on the pointed rocks. 

The planks are stripped like ribbons from the decks; 

Staunchions and bulwarks — all are swept away ; 

The great ribs crushed or widely torn apart. 

A wild, mad hiss as deluged fires are quenched — 

The howl of winds — the frightful dash of waves — 

The ship in pieces — water everywhere — 

Men, women, children, drowned within their berths, 

Or, shrieking, torn from sea-swept decks away. 

No time to call on God : the wild of waters 

Greedily swallowed into thundering deeps 

Each fear-chilled heart that waked from dreams of 

peace 
To die too noisily for thoughts of prayer. 
Though the black waves toss up their helpless prey, 



52 CHANGE. 



Though winds as pitiless howl cruel dirge, 
Though stretched neglected on the ocean-ooze 
The bodies of the drowned, uncared-for, lie; 
Yet the stilled hearts know nothing of all this : 
The lost sea-vo}'agers have sailed o'er the brink 
Of mortal life, — one quick, tumultuous change 
Hath landed them upon that other shore 
Along whose q(\^^ mysterious sea-fogs hang. 
An hour ago the ship was ocean's lord ; 
But, like a slave, the treacherous monster rose, 
And crushed with cruel blows his crippled lord- 
Alas ! vain man, the lesson still is Change! 



CHANGE. 53 



VI I. 



Ancient thou art, O War ! Far off I see I 

Thy monstrous shape in mythic glory clad, j 

The weird mirage of olden history — \ 

A mythic glory ! — yea, the sweetness glad, ] 

The grandeur, and the thrill of epic song, . 

Uplift thee. Not thy tears, Andromache, \ 

Nor the loud wail of Trojan women sad, ' 

Can drown the tumult of the noisy throng 

That shout " Achilles !" Ah ! hereditary i 

Despite of gentler teaching still remain ^ 

,1 

The embers of our early savagery; ' 

And all the growth of mind hath yet the stain '] 

I 
Of that wild passion of heroic joy 

That thrilled fierce warriors on the plains of Troy ! 

In Nature's quick decay, in accident, 
Infectious breath of pestilence, the wreck 
Upon the sea, the earthquake's yawning mouths. 



54 CHANGE. 



Th' electric bolt descending from the cloud — 
In all humanity finds death's broad change; 
But yet must needs invent a larger means, 
A quicker way, to reach the end of life. 
Upon the field, in marshalled ranks arrayed. 
And long, opposing lines of gleaming steel, 
Two armies meet with din of noisy war 
And sulphurous fires that light the path of Death. 
When from resounding throats the cannon hurl 
Through shattered ranks of men an iron storm ; 
When beating drums and flying banners lead 
Long, glittering lines to stormy Feast of Blood, 
Thy demon. Change, rides on the battle-smoke ; 
Laughs at the rattling'sound of rifle-shots. 
The crash of cannon, and the din of arms. 
Gay-plumed companion of the fatal one, 
When thy red hand is raised Time sits him down, 
Drops his sharp scythe, to cast admiring eye 
Upon thy quicker work, while Pity weeps 
O'er bloody victims that are struck by thee, — 
Slain for thy frightful hour of vampire-life. 
That you may drink the streams of flowing blood, 
And revel in a carnival of Death ! 



CHANGE. 55 



Triumphal strains may sing of htM'o-deeds 
Gilding with glory War's unsightly face; 
A thousand voices loudly shout in praise 
Of those who come with laurel garlands crowned 
And victory's proud triumph in their eyes, 
Forgetful in that hour how many deaths 
Have bound the shining chaplets on their brows, — 
How many homes and hearts are desolate. 
But there are those whose sad eyes will not light 
With fires of victory, whose memories rest 
With silent ones that lie in shallow graves, 
Their mangled bosoms ne'er again to thrill 
At triumph or the pageantry of war. 
The mourners of the dead cannot be glad, 
Nor welcome victory with loud acclaim; 
But in their hearts sad moralizing drowns 
The victor shouts : — a crown of laurel leaves 
Will fade, the noisy songs of triumph cease. 
While grief remains to wring a parent's heart, 
Sorrow to pale a widow's hollow cheeks. 
Suffering to hush the laugh on orphan lips, — 
The victims' tears outlast the victors' joys. 



56 CHANGE. 



VIII. 

I DREAMED I sat Lipoii an ancient mound, 
And mused of the old dwellers of the land, 
Whose toiling hands had raised this sacred ground. 
Heaping the earth at some strange god's command. 
And while I mused behold a dusky shape 
From bosom of the mound rose silently; 
Naught could I do, but on the phantom gape, — 
At length found voice to speak, though tremblingly: 
" Hast thou appeared, unearthly one, to tell 
The buried secrets of an ancient day 
And sad disasters that thy race befell ? 

speak, dim figure, and thy errand say !" 

1 heard no voice from that companion dread ; 

But " Change" seemed strangely whispered overhead. 

Man dies in full maturity of years. 
Or earlier stricken by the hand of Change ; 



CHANGE. 



But leaves no vacant place : his progeny, 

Inheritors of what he once called his, 

Assume his place, and sit in ancient seats 

Of many ancestors, till called in turn 

To follow their dead fathers, they give up, 

With many groans perhaps, what use hath made 

Famihar, and depart to shadowy lands 

Of their belief; and so the race goes on, — 

Not always : even the races of mankind 

From natural order of inheritance 

Lapse into change. From heritage of lands 

Their ancestors have held a thousand years 

A people pass ; nor leave untenanted 

The country that forgets them. On the track 

Of the outgoing race th' incomer treads. 

And soon his busy life may fill the land 

So noisily its din drowns dying legends 

And lingering memories of names and tales 

That hang a shadowy recollection round 

Secluded spots and lone, forsaken graves. 

Nor must we make a weary pilgrimage 

To distant lands to find an ancient grave 
c* 



58 CHANGE. 

Where we can sit, and muse of Time, and Change, 
And a lost race, — the graves are near at hand. 
In grassy vales through which the water-course 
Winds its green track meandering to the sea, 
Lo, here are vestiges of ancient men ! 
Great mounds with many-centuried oaks chance- 
lodged 
Of later growth upspringing from green slopes, 
Carefully shaped, the work of old-time zealots, 
Covering the earthen altars that yet hold 
The ashes of their sacerdotal fires. 
On craggy hill-tops run the broken lines 
Of ruined forts o'er which in crimson bloom 
Now clings the rose-tree, or in later days 
Of hazy Autumn loaded grape-vines hang 
Their ruby bunches ripening in the sun. 
Here once the lines of battle fiercely stormed. 
And red blood flowed where now the roses bloom. 
Or more remote in forests of Copan 
Are ancient sites of ruined, stone-built cities 
Where tumbling walls and statues yet well-poised, 
Or fallen half-buried in the rank, black soil, 
Greet with mysterious mockery every eye 



CHANGE. 59 



That looks upon their marble solitude ; 

While each grim figure with time-mouldered lines 

Seems striving still to tell its marvellous tale. 

These mounds, hill-fortresses, and statues strange, 

Are antique monuments of a dead Past, 

A people lost. 

In the forgotten time 
A nameless race set up its dwellings here ; 
Here gathered into nations; tilled the lands 
Tamed down from Nature's wildness by the toils 
Of these dead husbandmen : here clustered homes, 
And here grew up affections fervent, pure; 
And worthy lives were lived in that old time; 
And human passions wrought for good and ill 
As Virtue won her crown of sweet content. 
Or Vice upreared its hissing, serpent-head, — 
If we may judge this lost humanity 
By the known records of historic man. 
Here were enacted deeds perhaps as great 
As history blazons on its grandest page. 
And scenes of terror we may never know 
Unless Imagination penetrate 



6o CHANGE. 



The mouldered dust of buried centuries, 

And build again its mould and earth to life. 

What wild, strange tales might those grim spectres 

tell 
If they could rise again from ancient graves, 
Rear up erect long-crumbled skeletons. 
And fill each hollow bosom with a voice ! 
Here once was prosperous life, in whose best day 
With smiling skies above, broad, ripening fields. 
Bright hopes and promises, no bodement told 
Of danger, gloomy days, impending death. 
Ere yet the shadow of the coming end. 
Darkening the Beautiful to anxious eyes. 
Had crept upon their landscape, this lost race 
Built time-defying marble into piles. 
And cut engraven statues with quaint shapes, 
In the vain hope to tell a future age 
The greatness and the glory of their name. 
Vain hope ! — How wild had seemed the prophecy 
If some Cassandra of a western Troy 
Had raised her shrill voice in its populous streets. 
And cried, " In vain ! — in vain ! — a time will come 
When none can read your sculptured monuments, 



CHANGE. 6 1 

Nor find in one lone mound or fortress-hill 

The story hidden in their long decay 1 

Your deeds of might, worth, wisdom, wit, and skill, 

Shall all be burled in forgotten graves ! 

And stranger races in these marble streets, — 

Then desolate — will marvel who the builders were !" 

But none of all the city's thousands then 

Had heeded her mad cries. As they beheld 

The land's prosperity and teeming life ; 

Saw on the river-highways busy fleets. 

Bands of corn-planters toiling on the shores, 

Swart workers delving metals from the mines, 

The stately chiefs, the marshalled ranks of war, 

The city-builders, and the artisans, 

The pious host that worshipped at the mound, 

Or buried at its base a warrior-king, 

A wise philosopher, a sainted priest. 

They smiled to think a solid greatness theirs. 

And name enduring as their stone-built temples. 

Imagination yet may picture them. 

But they have left us no historic trace — 

No living type descended from those days 

Of might and pride — no weak, degenerate child 



62 CHANGE. 



To sing the glories of his ancestry — 

No record of a name, or law, or deed — 

No story of the sad catastrophe 

That brought oblivion to their stricken race. 

Yet this may be our fate. Such physical change 
As in the eras of geology 

Hath worked disturbance of Earth's broken crust, 
Contagion, failing nature, or a star 
Erratic hurled upon our sober sphere, — 
A hundred causes could be found would lead 
To our destruction. As they passed away, 
So we, who have no more security 
Of life than they ; no surer heritage 
Of earth ; no stronger grasp of future days : 
Our life, mortality, estate, the same : 
Like them the atoms that a mighty Hand 
Scatters abroad, or kindly gathers up. 

Whate'er the cause, before the frowns of Fate 
They passed away, and left their vacant homes, 
Cities, and lands, for other tenantry. 
Where by the stream or on the breezy hills 



CHANGE. (iT, 



The dwellings of the older people fell 

In slow decay, the savage Indian built 

His birchen hut; and roamed along the vales, 

And over the smooth sides of sacred mounds ; 

Hunted with primitive bow the forest game, 

Or with rude tackle drew the river's wealth ; 

But hastened from the hunt in forest glades 

And river-fishing to a cruel war 

With neighbor tribes ; and feasted wild desires 

In fierce excitement of barbaric strife. 

From whence he came, no records tell the tale ; 

A few, brief legends only left us now 

To sharpen the deep shadows that surround 

His coming and first dwelling in the land. 

Perhaps he came from East — from West. Perhaps 

With overwhelming numbers his wild tribes 

Extinguished nobler people that had built 

Temple and statued god in Yucatan, 

And raised with pious hands in fertile valleys 

Their mound-heaped altars ; or in last extremity 

Stretched rude defences on precipitous hill-tops. 

O'er which at length the fierce barbarians swarmed. 

When Civilization perished in the slaughter, 



64 CHANGE. 



Down-trodden, with sweet Art and gentle Culture, 
In the wild rush of savage multitudes. 
Perhaps 'twas war — perhaps a fatal pest — 
Made the red Indian master of the land, 
And left but ruined monuments to tell 
Of earlier races dead. 

From East to West, 
From Arctic winter to Antarctic ice, 
The Indian tribes filled the wide continent, 
Dreamless of Fate yet slumbering in the East, 
But soon to pour along Atlantic shores 
A locust horde ; before whose fatal hosts 
Their race must wither, yielding land and life 
To pitiless invaders, till at last 

Swept from their homes, — nor mound nor temple left 
To tell of more than rudest savagery, — 
They yielded place unto another race. 

And who came next ? The story is well known. 
In a new dawn of knowledge there was one 
Looked with clear eyes o'er misty wastes of ocean, 
Pictured broad countries set in equipoise 
On the round earth, the far antipodes 



CHANGE. 65 

To all the East, a new world in the West. 

The daring voyager whose clear-seeing mind 

Had studied Nature in her many forms, — 

Had dared to doubt what all the world believed,— 

Had dared believe what doubted all the world, — 

Put forth his barks to sea ; steered to the West ; 

Sailed o'er the trackless blue to that far land 

He oft had seen in his prophetic dreams 

Waiting his coming on the ocean's edge. 

That land he found, and back returning told 

His wondrous story to th' admiring world. 

A thousand vessels sailed upon the track 

Of the bold sailor who had shown the way, 

Landing their freights of men of Eastern race 

In forest-homes of Indians of the West. 

Their races could not mingle ; step by step, 

Each step disputed, was the red man driven 

Back from the ocean,— back until his path 

Ending in mountain, desert, or the sea. 

He can retreat no more : here brought to bay, 

And tearing foremost hunters, dies at last 

Contending for possession of a spot 

Where he may lay his w^eary body down, 



6* 



66 CHANGE. 



And where his bones may rest, — but not in peace : 
The farmer's plough upturning forest mould, 
Invades with sacrilege an Indian's grave. 

Thus hath the land been peopled, and grim Time 
Beheld the actors of Life's drama shift : 
One race its exit make, another come ; 
But through all changes still the acts go on. 
Who lived before the builders of the mounds 
We cannot know, yet doubtless man was here. 
The silent relics of that early race 
Have yet a voice, as hath the ancient Sphinx 
Who sits embedded in the sands of Nile, 
And if one word could cross the moveless lips 
Of Egypt's god, or statues of Copan, 
Those stony mouths would surely utter " Change!" 



CHANGE. 67 



IX. 



One day upon his throne Chaldea's king 

Sat with a clouded brow, and bade them bring 

From temple of the star-god, Bel, a priest. 

That from black gloom the king might be released ; 

And v/hen he came his deep-lined face expressed 

A withered age : him, thus the king addressed : 

" They tell me you are wise ; then answer me : 
What is this vague, o'erhanging mystery 
That clothes my life with strange and sad annoy, 
Drowning in my pained bosom every joy? 
Behold my glory! this proud Babylon 
That I have builded, sees my conquests won 
From half the world : the city that defied 
King Sargon's arms, hath yielded ancient pride 
Before my car : the wealth of Tyrian shrines 
In blazing gold about my city shines ; 



68 CHANGE. 

And all Assyria's glory decks me now, 
Bound with Chaldea's empire on my brow. 
Great Babylon, the queen of cities, is mine own, 
And I have palaces, each one alone 
Rich as a kingdom ; female slaves as fair 
As whitest ivory, their thick-tressed hair 
Of woven gold ; — but these no joys impart. 
Priest, can )'ou cure the sorrow of my heart?" 

As caverned waters, deeply gurgling, flow. 
Came the priest's answer, solemnly and slow : 

•' The careful records of two thousand years 
Are in our temple, and a thousand seers 
Study their figures, tracing mystic lines 
Of every star that on Chaldea shines. 
Upon these tabled figures of the Past 
Seven stars their ruling influence have cast. 
When grew Chaldea's empire widely spread. 
With growing light the seven blazed overhead ; 
But when her fortunes failed, pale grew the seven, 
Hiding their brilliance in the deeps of heaven. 



CHANGE. 69 

O king, alas ! though Hke a beacon-fire 

These stars proclaimed the fall of vanquished Tyre, 

Yet from that hour their lustre grew less bright, 

Dimly retreating in the arch of night 

Until Chaldea's eagle-visioned seers 

Catch not the twinkle of their distant spheres, 

While hostile hosts look down with eyes of gloom, 

And angry heavens declare a coming doom. 

O king, Chaldea's twenty centuries 

Hang o'er her as a hundred winters freeze 

My aged blood ! thy glory is the crimson light 

Of sunset that is fadingr in a nio;ht 

Of darkness, an enduring night whose morn 

Is in a distant time, a future dawn 

Too far for prophecy ; — more near I read 

In blood -red stars the victories of the Mede 

And lost Chaldea. King, thy sorrow strange 

Is the dark shadow of impending Change." 

And so the priest departed ; and the king 
Tore from his brow Chaldea's monarch-ring. 
And wandered forth bereft of human sense. 
Eating the grass with brute insipience. 



70 CHANGE. 

And when a {^\n^ inglorious years were o'er, 
Chaldea's ancient kingdom was no more. 

The marks of Change, in harsh, unsparing lines, 
Are set upon the nations. Kingly power, 
Illustrious dignity, the might of arms, 
And wide dominion — all of greatness, 
The quick years lessen — all of brightness, 
Cover with shadows. Pause, and look behind, 
Down the long vistas of historic years, 
What grand examples do we see of Change ! 
Egypt, Phoenician Carthage, Macedon, 
And greatest of the antique nations, Rome, — 
Where now are these ? Stupendous forms appear, 
Enthroned and crowned with empire's majesty — 
Vast, shadowy phantoms of the ancient time 
When each, in sceptred might. Colossus-like, 
O'erstrode, gigantic, the subjected lands : 
While weirdly flashes strange and spectral light 
From graves of Empire. Hollow voices cry, 
*' We were the great of earth in our great day; 
But Time and Change have swept our powei 
away!" 



CHANGE. 71 

Where now the primitive science Egypt's lore 
Gave to the world when to her sun-scorched land 
Came student youth, Phoenician, Hebrew, Greek, 
To drink with eager thirst of wisdom's cup — 
To catch from lips of Isis' large-browed priests 
The seeds of thought-matured philosophy 
To plant and foster in barbarian lands 
Until they ripened in Enlightenment, 
And Civilization spread to all the world ? 
As drifting sand engulfs the palaces 
That Egypt reared in her meridian day, 
So sands of Time engulf her history ; 
Arts, wisdom, science, lost amid the years, 
With all the marvels of her ancient life. 

Where are the ships of Carthage, that of yore 
Sailed out with merchandise, or armed for war, — 
Adventurous beaks that traversed every sea : 
Along the coasts where Grecian Jason sailed 
To fruitful Colchis for the Golden Fleece; 
Beyond the pillars built by Hercules 
When he went out to capture Geryon's herds; 
Or to that famous *' Island of the West," 



72 CHANGE. 



The far Atlantis of the ocean-kings ?^ 

Where are they now ? They sail the seas no more. 

Over the city of the Tyrian queen 

The Roman drove his ploughshare, and its tracks 

Sowed deep with salt to show his bitter hate. 

Carthage, destroyed, rebuilded and destroyed, 

Exists no more ; nor leaves behind a trace 

Of language, law, or ancient monument. 

To join her famous past with modern days. 

Where is the empire that the bounds of earth 
Confined in narrow limits of its map, 
Too small a kingdom for th' ambitious one 
Who wept for worlds to conquer? Change on change 
Hath swept his land, and Macedon is now 
A province of the Turk ; and that old tale, 
How crouched the East beneath the victor foot 
Of him who in the Libyan desert claimed 
His high descent from Amnion, seems a myth, 
The romance of an Eastern story-teller 
When the tired caravan at mid-day halts, 
And weary camels stretch along the sands 
While their swart-visaged masters sit them down 



CHANGE, 73 



To smoke their perfumed pipes, and hear a tale 
Of wondrous marvels such as Scherezade 
Told to her sultan in th' Arabian Nights. 

Where are Rome's armies ? In the olden time 
The trampling of her legions shook the lands 
From Tigris to the Thames. An iron war 
Poured from her city of the palaced hills — 
Where Janus' temple stood with open doors — 
As from Vesuvius pours its lava streams 
In hot destroying floods. Her eagles flew 
O'er mountains, rivers, plains, and stormy seas, 
Stretching her empire round the trembling world; 
Subduing Britons in far-distant isles ; 
Crushing the Afric on his sandy deserts ; 
And driving all the North's barbarians 
To seek asylum on their mountain-tops. 
In the rich East, Rome gathered dearest spoils, — 
Spoils to despoil the spoiler : Asia's wealth 
And Egypt's pomp relaxed the arm of War, 
And lost the victors in the siren charms 
Of Luxury and Sloth. While thus effete. 
On their soft dalliance came the locust swarms 

D 7 



74 CHANGE. 



Of wild barbarians, Tartar, Scyth, and Hun, 
Who trampled down Rome's glory and her power. 
Now Roman war affrights the world no more ; 
The Roman soldier and his victor sword 
But types of the antique : they live in bronze 
To ornament these days ; their lesson hid 
Beneath the glory of dead Caesar's name. 



CHANGE. 75 



X. 



Deft hands of Change, the little and the vast, 
Are shaping Progress ; and each Age elate 
With something new, or better than the Past, 
Still prides itself upon its high estate ; 
Looks back on former years with pitying eye ; 
Sees how the objects of its present pride 
Grew up from littleness till broad and high 
Their greatness overshadows all beside. 
The darlings of this Progress — who can fill 
The catalogue ? Art, power, philosophy, 
Wealth, culture, various fashions good and ill, 
Have each in turn had an ascendency : 
And still the World is shouting with vain joy, 
And measuring Progress by each new discovery. 

As in the Past, the nations of to-day 
Are plastic to disturbing touch of Change 



76 CHANGE. 



That whirls upon them in accomplished facts, 

Or shapes their destinies with slower care. 

Often Change comes, a lowly, creeping thing 

Which we deride, or in the garb of fashions 

At which we laugh, but, while we laugh, assume. 

Sometimes its progress hides in mysteries 

And dark enigmas that w^e cannot solve ; 

Or the strong march of circumstances sets 

Broad marks upon the people and the land : 

Shaping opinion by the might of acts, 

Dressing up Nature in such strange attire 

She seems pranked out for some quaint masquerade. 

The rustic dwellers of an inland vale, 
Wondering, behold a busy, noisy band 
Invade their quiet fields. Over the stream, 
Along the valley, through the hills, toil these : 
Bridging, embanking, cutting, tunnelling, 
And laying down in straight or curving track 
Their double iron lines. The trespassed vale 
Sleeps quietly no more. The reaper turns 
To see a clashing train go swiftly by; 
The children run in terror to their homes. 



CHANGE. 77 



Or, with pale faces, peep from cottage doors ; 
Cattle affrighted gallop o'er the fields ; 
And dogs bark loudly. From the distant hills 
The mocking voice of Echo sends again 
Her murmur of the din. Swift to those hills 
The monster speeds ; scared Echo's voice is mute ; 
And all the tumult dies. But time goes on, 
And railroad trains grow into common things. 
While populous towns spring up along their line. 

The youthful reaper who in wonder turned 
To see a thing of noise, and smoke, and strength, 
And crashing wheels, disturb his summer day, 
Resumed his work again; but marvelled much, 
As often on his mind the thought would push : 
The world hath stranger things, perhaps, than this, 
Beyond these fields ; — until at length resolved. 
He leaves his scythe in less adventurous hands, 
And goes to seek his fortune "' down the line," — 
His fortune. Work, of which in time are born 
Knowledge and Skill ; these he brings back with 

him; 
And in those fields where once he swung a scythe, 

7^ 



78 CHANGE. 



Builds hugely up a gaping furnace-stack, 
And harvests iron as of old the grain. 

So Progress makes strange changes in the land, 
And in its people. In the Past they lived 
Perhaps content to cultivate the fields 
On which like native growth of shrub, or tree, 
Or slothful cattle, Fortune cast their lives, — 
Content to obey the laws their fathers held, 
To question nothing in the plan of things 
They had not wit nor wish to understand. 
But changeful Progress, jostling men together, 
Provokes a multitude of teeming thoughts ; 
All things are questioned ; and the old-time law, 
Under the pressure of opinion, bends ; 
'Tis propped perhaps, or some new form contrived 
To suit the fashion of the changing times ; 
Or, if too long neglected, breaks downright, 
And greater change is built upon its wreck. 

Awakened thought disturbs the minds of men. 
And will not let them rest. What one man thinks, 
Hath not, in him alone, disturbing power 



CHANGE. 79 



To move mankind ; but his thought's progeny 
May stir the world in countries most remote : 
For, while he speaks, his thought is cast abroad 
As flies a feathered seed that chance may set 
In fertile soil, and kindly sun and rains 
Nurture to fruitfulness ; the harvest often 
Beyond proportion to the slender planting : 
No seed so sure to grow as a new thought. 
Public opinion is that thought matured 
In many minds, the harvest of the seed, — 
A harvest often overwhelming law 
Founded on old belief and precedent, 
As a mud dike goes down before the storm 
And wash of waves. The progress of the world 
Is the illumination of the general mind, 
And marks advance with corresponding change 
On the political framework of each state. 

As Knowledge, Science, Art, send kindly beams 
On man's intelligence, it is as if 
He put a window in a dark, old tower 
Where the dim shadows long have had their homes, 
And where hath lurked the legendary ghost 



8o CHANGE. 



With bats, and owls, and creatures of the night. 
Now from his ancient perch the spectre flits 
To find a place of gloom, the light of day 
Dissolving its thin shape in mockery. 
This poor, light-haunted ghost is a fit type 
Of ignorance; for in the kindling beams 
The new day sheds on yesterday's dull gloom, 
Old superstitions, born of ignorance. 
And reared in darkness, are lit up by truth, 
And their grotesque proportions so displayed . 
That Laughter drives away the things long feared, 
As the grown child laughs off a bugaboo. 

Could we anticipate the coming years, 
Outstrip gray Time in his untiring flight 
Through centuries, so looking forward, read 
The pages of an unmade history. 
What startling changes might such reading show ! 
What strange development of trifles now 
Cast then enormous figures on the page 
To mock our prophecies ! How will the years 
Roll over men ? Will such progression make 
Them wiser? happier? Will the heavy chains, 



CHANGE. 8i 



Forged in the Past, drop one by one away 

Till, free in limb and soul, our race shall stand 

Beneath the stars a little less than angels ? 

Or will the ancient bonds, a heritage 

From ancestry of slaves, be heired along 

Our line, and keep its last descendant 

A slave although impatient of his bondage ? 

The nations of to-day, will they at length dissever 

As the old peoples of the past have done, 

And from their gathered fragments new states 

rise 
To grow, and flourish ? to decay, and die ? 
What changes burden the immediate years, 
Rounding events our lives assist to shape ? 

Will War be laid away on marble tomb 
Like armored effigy of olden knight, 
And Peace with olive wreath on saintly brow. 
With sister Justice bearing equal scales, 
Sit the fair judges of each questioned claim? 
Have years subdued War's fierceness ? sapped his 

strength ? 
Ah, no ! this demon, mighty in the Past, 



82 CHANGE, 



Grows yet more lusty in these modern days ; 

Nor feels the wasting touch of time's decay 

On his strong limbs; but with a monarch's voice 

Bids Science bring him newly-fashioned arms, 

Knowledge equip his strength with each device 

Her cunning can contrive, and all the toil 

Of modern thought new-sharpen his old sword. 

Breech-loading weapons, guns of calibre 

Immense, and iron ships impregnable, 

Armed with a force beyond the thunder-bolt 

The Greek imagined in the hand of Zeus — 

Beholding Science toil with blackened hands 

And sooty brow, forging his mighty arms, 

We may not dream his fierce campaigns are o'er. 

Or that mild Peace can steal away his sword. 

And teach the olden giant useful arts : 

To train the vine, to till the fallow earth, 

Or reap the rustling fields of yellow grain. 

France, England, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Spain, 
The Turk, Egyptian, Tartar, and Chinese, 
Through Europe's bounds and Asia's wide domains, 
Constantly arm, and discipline for war. 



CHANGE. 83 

Their workshops ring with busy armorers 

Forging War's panoply, Cyclopia arms ; 

From furnace-doors the molten iron pours 

Ton after ton in gaping cannon-moulds ; 

Tax-paying husbandmen groan under toil, 

Harvesting unremunerative crops, 

That much-drilled soldiers may parade in arms 

If full-gorged War shall chance to sleep the while, 

Or light his baleful fires, and launch his thunders, 

When the fell monster wakes to dreadful carnage. 

Like a vast chess-board is the Eastern world. 

Where kings, hedged round with bishops, queen, and 

knights, 
Push on base pawns, plebeian ranks of war, 
Across the squares where each contends for place, 
While follows castled strength to fortify success. 

O Change, thou art the spirit of the three, — 
The fabled three that spin, and cut, life's threads ! 
And from thy distaff run so many lines 
Of chanceful fortunes, weaving into webs 
Of strange entanglement about our lives, 
That like a subtle, calculating Fate 



84 CHANGE. 



You brood above all things, and weave the Future 
From the unfinished patterns of the Past : 
And human passions, hopes, and selfishness, 
War, Peace, Prosperity, Famine, and Death, 
Are figures broidered in your tapestry : 
As the life-roll unfolds, they flash before us. 
Prilling to-days and promising to-morrows. 
As they have done in many yesterdays ! 



CHANGE. 85 



XI. 



If I should dream, with old Pythagoras, 

My soul through many bodies hath been fleeing; 

Or if I follow paths analogous, 

Tracing the man-life up the scale of being ; 

Yet at the end of each grand speculation 

I find the Psyche fretting in her cage, 

Securely locked in her close habitation, 

Ambitious tenant in a small messuage. 

Why should she flutter in a vain desire 

To break her bars ? why foster so much pride ? 

Why scorch her tender wings with passion's fire ? 

Or beg Philosophy her flight to guide ? 

A few quick-speeding years beneath the stars. 

And Death will tear away her prison-bars. 

And man, himself, doth change in Nature's plan,- 
Man, theme of every song he vainly sings, 



86 CHANGE. 



Nature's great egotist, for whom the world — 

Yea, the wide universe — was greatly built ; 

For whom the stars were set within the skies ; 

For whom the glad sun shines, the moon revolves, 

The rainbow spans the cloud, the cloud is tinged 

With rainbow tints ; for whom the flowers bloom. 

Summer with harvest smiles, and wholesome fruits 

Grow ripe in autumn days ; for whom the tribes 

Of lower life exist, his food, his slaves, 

Or idle playthings of his idle hours, 

Doomed by his theories magnanimous 

To please himself, then yield existence up 

Without a future, or another use ; 

For whom, through the uncounted lapse of ages, 

Matter was marvellously moved in space, 

By slow degrees Earth's masonry upreared, 

A palace builded for this lordly king. 

In whose bright halls he struts and domineers 

Through an allotted life so very short 

That in the process of the general movement 

It holds no measure with infinity. — 

How doth he change ? Must he perforce believe 

In a development from lower things — 



CHANGE. 87 



From brutal tribes he deems are far beneath 

His kingly rank ; and these perhaps derived 

From earlier types of ruder animals ; 

Descending in a nice, organic scale 

By mystic laws through vegetation's forms 

To find gross parentage in the primitive rocks ? 

This origin hurts his pride, too greatly vain 

Of his high powers and higher destiny, — 

Which fond desire hath largely pictured out 

On the wide canvas of post-mortem life, — 

To listen to the claims of Mother-earth, 

Or to acknowledge kinship with the sod — 

Too much incredulous of power and goodness 

To think God's scheme is large enough to hold 

In the wide halls of its futurity 

Aught but his self-elected, fortunate race. 

Yet all his science reads the past in vain, 

Or points along a path that leads him down, 

Not up, in scale of things intelligent : 

Through the lake-dwellers and the Age of Stone, 

The pleistocene cave-men and the miocenes. 

Comrades of mammoth and rhinoceros. 

Back to the days when the wild forest glades 



S8 CHANGE. 



Shook with the terror of gorilla shrieks, — 
When, monarch of the wild, the primitive man 
Waged dreadful battle with enormous brutes. 
Himself as brutal as his hunted quarry. 
But king of brutes by right of quenchless valor. 
Oft moved perhaps by strange and fitful dawning 
Of an intelligence one day to crown 
With kinglier glory his posterity. 
Finding this genealogy far-traced, 
Dragging an ignominious track through brutes, 
Not soaring upward to the angels, man 
Turns to re-search more carefully the Past, 
To find the clue that leads him up, not down ; 
Not finding, claims that Science hath presumed 
Beyond her province when she followed tracks 
Of human footsteps in the dead years' dust. 
As if men classed with lower forms of life. 



CHANGE. 89 



XII. 

Identity ? Nay, is it not a dream, 

An oft-returning fancy of my brain. 

That I can lift me from this rushing stream 

Of circumstance, myself untouched remain, 

The while all else whirls on irrevocably ? 

A little child laughs gayly as he sails 

Out on life's sea, the world a merry play. 

Strong manhood thrills while passion's stormy gales 

Blow round him, life a fierce reality. 

Age, with its slower pulse, looks back, delays, 

Finds life perhaps at last a vanity. 

So runs disturbing Change through all our days — 

Youth, manhood, age — with every hour a phase. 

Can one identity run through the maze ? 

The chemist tests a fragment of the earth, 
Counting the elements therein contained ; 



90 CHANGE. 



If we may do the like with all the world, 

Making analysis of Nature's mass, 

We find three elements compose the whole : 

Consciousness, matter, and a moving force. 

Matter unmoved by force, had been a death 

Without an antecedent life ; for life 

Means more than one impulsive throb — 

Than merely a creation. One quick change 

From nothingness to being would have thrilled 

Infinity ; and, after that, a sleep. 

The Power that made creation would have shown 

A barren exercise of useless Will, 

Filling eternity with stagnant death. 

No ! to the thing create, an attribute 

Of Primal Power was lent : force like a storm 

Came down upon the new-born atomies. 

And drove them madly forth. No lifeless sleep 

Was the great purpose of Creative Thought 

In the conception of far-reaching matter. 

We cannot read that purpose in its end ; 

But know so much : whate'er the end may be,— 

If end there is, — 'tis fashioned by this Change 

That works so busily about us now. 



CHANGE. 91 



Moulding Earth's substance as a potter moulds 
And spins to shape a lump of plastic clay. 

Matter and force ! — how mightily they move, 
And in what puzzling ways of intricacy, 
Driving on blazing paths enormous suns, 
Sending quick telegrams through nerves of life. 
Painting with brilliant hues the moth's bright wings, 
Writing a history on the rind of Earth ! — 
Matter and force ! still the great act goes on : 
Around us the phenomena of Change 
Present a constant action, mingling whirl 
Of many wheels that make confusing hum ; 
Yet all subserve one Purpose and one Will, 
While through their clatter. Time, his pendulum 

swings, 
Telling that Nature moveth ever on 
With certainty. What is the purposed end 
Thus wrought by Change ? Why this machinery 
Whose ceaseless movement rattles in our ears ? 
What does it mean ? The riddle of the Sphinx 
Was plain as A, B, C, to these enigmas ; 
And yet hereon more puzzling riddles hang : 



92 CHANGE. 

The third great element in Nature's plan, 

A consciousness that gathers to itself 

Matter and force to shape them into thought, 

Is with both force and matter strangely mixed 

In its own being. Wherefore are we here ? 

What is the purpose of the life of man? 

Is it to eat, and drink, and fill each sense 

To full satiety with animal joys? 

Is it to sleep a lazy lifetime out 

As one would doze away a dreary stage ? 

If such the purpose, the machine is built 

Too finely for its use. Beneath the whole, 

Matter, and force, and this strange consciousness, 

The mystery lies ; or darkly hidden from us 

In the dull fog of our slow faculties 

That cannot see beyond their own gray haze 

The clear, bright beauty of the Master's thought. 

The simple purpose of the numberless wheels 

Of this continuous change. Perhaps in vain 

We weary brain and heart to learn the thing 

Too broad for our conception. In our school 

We sit as yet upon the lower seats. 

And study rudiments; the time may come 



CHANGE, 93 



We shall sit higher. In the forms of Change, 

And Nature's processes is wisdom written : 

May not our mission be to study Change ? 

From subtle intricacy evolve its laws ? 

The mind's broad powers point to such design, 

A nobler use than feeding passions' fever, 

Gorging brute sense, the lethargy of slumber. 

Or dragging thought on tramways through our lives. 

If 'tis too much to hope to know the whole. 

Then we may learn a little : lift ourselves 

Toward the light, whose glimmering intimates 

A wise intent hath drawn the myriad lines 

Of tangled web, to us a labyrinth 

No Ariadne's thread can guide us through. 

Perhaps it is a problem whose solution 

Shall slowly bring us intellectual growth, 

And ripen mental strength, as step by step 

We rise to level of each higher thought 

That brings us nearer to the perfect plan. 

This is beyond the present reach of mind. 

The other end of life's entangled skein ; 

Meanwhile we must content us to go on 

Still in the rudiments, and leave the end 



94 CHANGE. 



In the safe hand of an unfailing Wisdom 
That fashioned matter, lent it living force, 
And placed man's consciousness amid its whirl. 

Force into Matter, — the result is Change : 
Movement that sends far-travelling sun-rays forth; 
That moulds the things of earth ; that governs men. 
Their races, nations ; that disturbs the seas ; 
That through all nature builds the countless germs, 
Developing a universal life. 

Force into Consciousness, — there still is Change : 
The human mind is not a steadfast thing ; 
If immaterial its substance be, 
It hath so much analogy with earth 
To feel the active tyranny of force, 
And dance with atoms in their frenzied whirl. 

I dare not hug the thought that I, myself, 
Am constant to myself; for yesterday 
The sunshine and the lovely bloom of flowers 
By some sweet mystery seemed parts of me ; 
But while to-day the same bright sunshine glows, 



CHANGE. 95 



And loveliest flowers of dainty tint and shape 

Put forth sweet bloom and perfume round my way, 

Their beauty is a cruel mockery, 

As tempting grapes to hunger-wasted lips 

Of tortured Tantalus. Are happiness 

And misery the same? Alas! in me 

The change ! There was a gay and radiant time 

When bright Romance hung chaplets on each chance 

Of wayward fortune ; and a dismal time 

When mocking demons plucked away each charm 

That sweetens life, the great world desolate 

And dreary, beauty the unworthy tints 

Painted on shameless cheeks to hide decay, — 

A time of buoyancy, — a time of gloom, — 

Time of credulity and time of doubt. 

It is within my bosom and my brain, 

Not in the outward world of facts and forms, 

Such change belongs. It comes to me 

By sympathetic ties of mother-earth ; 

By oft experience of matter's change ; 

In joy's gay laugh ; in disappointment's tears. 

Through all the action of this busy scene 

Phase follows phase as spokes flash round a wheel. 



96 CHANGE. 



So closely crowd conditions in the mind 
That momentary beings pass away, 
Leaving faint impress on the dizzy brain, 
And new ones dawn, which in their turn give place 
To others, thronging there, that flash and die, 
Dividing life in parts so numberless 
We cannot stay to weigh or measure them. 
Great epochs, crowning changes come to all. 
Broad tide-marks, where the swelling flood of fortune 
Floated our life-ship on a glorious sea, 
Or, in its ebb, upon some dreary shore 
Stranded and wrecked hope's richest-freighted voy- 
age,— 
Eras on which Remembrance loves to dwell. 
Or pale-faced Misery in sorrow broods. 
These are apart, perhaps with years between, 
While woven round them in embroidered web, 
The various fabrics of the lives of men 
Unroll their curious patterns to our eyes. 



CHANGE. 97 



XIII. 

" The god of sunset — see," the Egyptian cried, — 
" It thinks ! How dared I, poor earth-creature, cut 
Upon the face of Sphinx god-thoughted pride ? 
His power looks forth ! the rock is deified ! 
Behind that brow of stone is darkly shut 
From men his high intents. A hand not mine 
Did guide my chisel. While I graved each line 
I felt the grasp and thrill of power divine. 
What is its thought? I know not. Who can tell? 
Too wise for m.e the purposes that dwell 
In that stone face. Perhaps those lips, now still, 
May one day speak ; that brow, for good or ill. 
Unfold its thought. You say, 'tis art of mine : 
If it be so, then is my art divine." 

In the capricious bosoms of mankind 
Religion hath as often varying form 



98 CHANGE. 

As mind's diversity. 'Tis sad or gay, 
Austere or merry, full of gentleness. 
Or harsh with rigor and compelling fires, 
Filling glad hearts with joyful promises. 
Or mortifying life with anxious cares. 
It howls and whirls in frenzy with the dervish ; 
Fasts with the lonely hermit of a cave; 
Falls into prayer with Moslem when the call 
Of blind muezzin sounds from minaret; 
Builds the great dome of holy Peter's church ; 
Or travels, footsore, to some sacred shrine 
With a devoted band of pious pilgrims; 
With Epicurus laughs ; with Cato frowns ; 
Or with Diogenes is happy in a tub ; — 
Yet under many forms, one principle 
Maintains, the common mover of men's hearts. 
A keen perception of th' unresting force 
That drives its chariot wheels around the earth, 
And flashes Change from every star of heaven, 
Combined with consciousness of impotence 
To stay one atom, or delay one change, 
Compels the worshipper on bended knees 
To lift his prayers to some symbolic god, 



CHANGE. 99 

Or bow his soul before the mastery 
Of an omniscient and eternal Power — 
The creature calls to the divinity. 

The savage lifts to his bright sun-god's face 
Worshipping hands ; adores the silver moon ; 
Hears a god's voice in the deep tones of thunder ; 
Beholds his anger flash from night's deep gloom 
In crooked, dazzling lines of blinding flame. 
He worships an ideal of light and might, 
Enthroned mysteriously above the skies. 
But when, instructed by conceptive thought, 
Or prompted by imagination's dreams, 
He fancies likeness to his intellect 
In powers that change material shapes of earth, 
Then powers of intellect become his gods. 
Garbed in the forms of man or manlike beast. 
Thus the old Greek with ardent, artist mind. 
Set on Olympian heights the thunderer, Zeus, 
And heavenly court of his Saturnian kindred. 
In Egypt broader thought built larger gods : 
Osiris, Isis, were th' imagined ones. 
Symbols of force and of prolific Earth, 



CHANGE. 



The great high-priests of a yet higher One, 
But dressed in attributes that make up man. 
Mind was the moving power behind them all 
Compelling worship; man prostrated him 
To forms of marble, bronze, or painted wood, 
Because his mind adored an ideal mind, 
And here its symbol ; though the worshipper, 
In his fond ecstasy of fervent zeal, 
Looked not perchance beyond the symbolism. 

The larger culture of Egyptian priests 
Decayed with age; Apis and Isis fell, 
And smaller gods were set upon their thrones. 
O'er classic Greece and Latin Rome swept hordes 
Of fierce barbarians from th' uncultured North, 
Trampling soft luxury's minions underfoot. 
Upsetting empire, crushing old-time rule, 
O'erturning statues of divinities 
And sacred altars on whose carven shapes 
The Greek had lavished all his matchless art. 
The sire of Saxons, large-limbed, flaxen-haired, 
Dashed with his ponderous axe the front of Jove ; 
Clutched with fierce hands the radiant, golden zone 



CHANGE. loi 



Of Venus ; robbed god Mercury of his wand ; 

And laughed disdainful of such ones set up 

In pomp of temples for a slavish worship. 

In the religion of the cultured South 

The Northman sowed the seeds of bolder thought, 

Conception of a better heritage 

For man, beside, and not beneath, divinity. 

Not abject adoration, but a claim 

In right of manhood, marked his nobler worship. 

Meantime was born a large philosophy ; 
Out of a people's lowest ranks was given 
The pure example of a blameless life ; 
And lowly, from the midst of fishermen 
And humble artisans, came forth a voice 
That taught, the purpose of life's scheme is love — 
A love that gathers to one Father-heart 
His creatures, where the outcast, wretched leper 
Hath equal place beside the sceptred king. 
Too broad a theme ! the narrow-thoughted as^es 
Caught but a glimmer of the kindly light 
Thus shed ; and though the high-domed Pantheon 
Was emptied of its older deities, 



I02 CHANGE. 



Their counterparts were set in each high niche : 

A Mary on the pedestal of Juno, 

And row of sad-faced saints upon the blocks 

Where once were poised the hero-gods of Greece. 

Still over all swept Time, th' iconoclast. 

And many saints were hurled from sacred place 

To mingle fragments with the broken gods 

Of dead mythologies ; and the sweet light 

Of love was shadowed in the human heart 

By superstition, ignorance, lust of power. 

And a vain-glorious zeal of proselytism. 

Flashing and flickering in the stormy breath 

Of passions, — as a blown torch flares about 

In windy gusts, sometimes almost put out. 

And the next moment flinging forth bright flames, 

This thought of Father-love, ill-comprehended, 

Prompted the dogmas of conflicting creeds; 

Divided churches ; lit the cruel fires 

That burnt the martyrs ; sent brave exiles forth 

To plant their faith in lands beyond the sea. 

So hath Religion, like fantastic masker, 
Appeared in many shapes and various dress ; 



CHANGE. 103 

But yet within, a moving instinct held 
Unchangeable its grasp of worshipping hearts: 
And we to-day feel the same mystic awe 
That bowed our ancestors to wooden blocks, 
Bending us down, each to his chosen ideal. 

As Science is released from brutal grasp 
Of Superstition, in her gratitude 
She fills the world with cheerful promises 
And ready help ; deciphers the strange puzzles 
That long have vexed bewildered intellect ; 
Gathers and classifies determined facts ; 
Reads the wise laws ordained of old to rule 
The primal atoms that creation gave ; 
Clearing the way to broader reach of thought, 
That men may look above with grander zeal 
Than object-worship shining in their eyes. 
While building the high throne of deity 
Grander and brighter than blind adoration 
Hath skill to do, she whispers to the souls 
Of worshippers suggestions from the thought, 
That all the showings of nice powers of sense, 
All that wise thinkings yet have ravelled out 



I04 CHANGE. 



From the confusing intricacy around, 
Are little parts of a well-ordered whole, 
The simpler figures of an infinite scheme 
Where relative conditions are the words 
God speaks to man by Nature's myriad tongues. 
Thus placed a scholar in the school of life, 
He needs no more such symbols as of old 
To give his mind communion with his God. 
Nature gives larger symbols in its facts 
Than cloudy attribute or ideal thought, — 
A positive showing of the Infinite Will, — 
Letters engraven broadly on the world, 
Telling of power, beneficence, and love. 

Science is knowledge classified, a step 
From Nature's manifestations to their laws, 
A reading of the lessons set for man 
In his first primer-book, the outspread world. 
Showing how near at hand, and out beyond, 
A supreme Wisdom reigneth. As a scheme 
Of nice adjustment and well-balanced force — 
Conception of a unity of thought 
And steadfast purpose in each busy movement — 



CHANGE. 105 



A wise contrivance in life's noisiest whirl — 

Glimmer in faint reflection on his mind, 

They kindle there ambition's daring fires 

And grand suggestions that reach broadly out 

From atoms, movement, laws, to their First Cause: 

That which can comprehend, must be of kind 

With that which hath contrived, — the thought is clear ; 

So man, perceiving Nature may be traced 

Through little spaces by his patient thought, 

Feels his relation to his God more near; 

Feels the religious instinct of his soul 

Urge him to follow knowledge in the paths 

Where Science leads to Nature's altar, Truth. 

Religion, science, — why oppose the words ? 

One is the impulse to reach up, beyond 

Earth's accidents, to Heaven's serenity 

And changeless Power that sits upon its throne ; 

The other shows the way. Another way 

Faith, with her heavenward eyes, may point to us ; 

What matter which we take, the end the same ? 

The sainted zealot kneeling at the shrine, 
Or prostrate cast beneath the crucifix. 



io6 CHANGE. 



Cries n\ an ecstasy of fervent zeal, 

"Salva, O Jesu, me miserrimum !" 

An earnest preacher, warm in his belief, 

Propounds to rapt disciples holy creed ; 

Franklin, with kite-string and with Leyden-jar, 

His forehead bared to angry elements. 

Questions the flashing messengers of God; 

Or Young, — not he who wrote his sad " Night - 

Thoughts," 
But the learned doctor of philosophy, — 
Follows the waves of light through devious maze 
Up to the Source that planned their wondrous 

ways — 
Which of these worshippers, thus lifting hands 
Toward His throne, and to His light of truth, 
Presents the largest tribute unto Deity ? 
Lays on His altar most acceptable gifts? 
Which best fulfils the purpose of his being ? 
Follows most surely the instinctive guide 
Set, like a compass, \\\ the soul of man ? 
Which comes the nearest to the Heart of Love 
Whose great pulsations fill the universe ? — 
How dare we judge, or draw dividing line, 



CHANGE. 107 



The impulse, the admiring heart, the same ; 
In all the same up-reaching toward God ? 

While thus religion, an eternal law, 
Impels mankind as matter is propelled 
By gravitation, or as atoms move 
Obedient to the laws of their affinities ; 
Around this native and unchanfjino; force 
We group our symbols in the fond belief 
That thus we picture the great gates of Truth ; 
And that our thoughts are its mysterious light 
Filtered through Nature into souls of men. 



io8 CHANGE. 



XIV. 

"I AM too happy," the rich Lydiaii cried, 
And cast in hungry mouth of deep-sea tide 
His costHest ring; then with rejoicing breast 
Rode gayly home to revel, laugh, and feast. 
And when he dined, behold a monstrous fish, 
That morning caught, was served on golden dish, 
While all the feasters gazed with hungry eyes 
As the king's carver sliced the dainty prize. 
Why doth he pause ? what doth he give the king ? 
The sea returns the monarch's precious ring. 
Pales the king's face ; "Alas ! alas !" he cries, 
'' The cruel Fates my costly gift despise ! 
Look down, Apollo, through soft, Lydian skies, 
And quench the hate in the fell sisters' eyes !" 

I must not trust the pleasant promises 
Of smiling Fortune ; nor forget the fillet, 



CHANGE. 109 



That binds her eyes, may hide her mischievous 

guiles ; 
Nor grow enamored of her sunny looks 
And dangerous charms until they drive away 
Prudence, protecting fears, and recollection 
Of all the lessons of her strange caprice. 
I may not rest in safe tranquillity 
Though custom tell me that to-morrow's sun 
Will shine as brightly, and its blossoms open 
As sweetly, as to-day's. If, charmed and drugged 
By poppy-perfumes of my happiness, 
I dream of bright to-morrows, weep perhaps 
O'er woes that touch my neighbors, — tears soon 

dried 
In my own pleasant sunshine, — nor believe 
Calamity can come within the borders 
And pleasance of my life ; so perilous dreams 
May be the prelude of strange opposites 
And dread realities. How rude the shock. 
To see th' enchanted palace of my joys 
Sail suddenly away ! bare, unknown deserts 
Mock my dismay ! to mark on other faces 
The sympathetic limning of the misery 



no CHANGE. 



That tortures me ! Philosophy, alas, 

In thy cold schemes there is no sovereign cure 

For broken hearts ! thy wholesome antidotes 

Must be preparatory to our hurts, 

And temper joy's wild flush with calming thoughts 

Before calamity's black days appear ! 

As in romantic tale, an errant knight 

Puts on his strongest suit of shining mail 

When he would venture in enchanted lands. 

Or through the magic halls of some strange castle 

Where pomp and beauty shine in golden splendor ; 

So we should buckle wisdom's safest harness 

Securely on our bosoms when we go 

To meet the fairest fortunes, lest beneath 

A Siren's smile may lurk a Siren's guile, — 

Harness of wisdom on whose cold steel rings 

Misfortune's arrows may unhurtful fall, 

And rough Adversity's malicious blows 

Rattle in vain. When Fortune sweetly smiles 

Let us remember what a sage of old 

Declared : " No one may say, * Happy am I,' 

Until his life hath reached a happy end ;" 

For, lo ! the demon, Change, uplifts his head, 



CHANGE. Ill 

And Croesus is despoiled of countless wealth, 
His haughty forehead leveled in the dust, 
His crown exchanged for fetters of a slave. 

The world presents examples in each life. 
Nor need we search to find the one of Change. 
'Tis you, myself, my neighbor ; each of us 
May fill alike the place. Shall I take one 
From his high niche in the world's history, 
And set him in my page to blazon it, 
To show that Change can reach resistless hand 
Above the throne of Empire, and pull down 
A monarch to the same unhappiness 
That hangs its chains of misery on a slave ? 

A boyhood filled with vague imaginings 
Of golden castles built upon the tops 
Of the sun-lighted, crimson banks of cloud, 
The gleaming country of his island skies. 
He saw bright hosts press on with waving plumes, 
Gay-bannered victories — a breath, a blast 
As of a magic horn of wizard might, 
And tumbling shapes of air dissolved the spell, 



112 CHANGE, 

And in its place gleamed towers and palace-walls 

Of an imperial city. Who may tell 

If not foreshadowed there the changing scenes 

Of an eventful life ! In sunset glare 

Perchance he saw a visioned Moscow burn ; 

Or in the levin-flash from stormy cloud 

Beheld the fatal fires of Austerlitz 

Painting the sky with frescoed crowns and thrones. 

But time swept on ; the days of dream were past, 

And speculative thought exchanged for deeds. 

With all the ardor of a daring heart 

To which Fate whispers thrilling messages, 

He came on the arena of the world, 

His country's soldier. To his dazzled view, 

Above the tumult of chaotic change, 

Ambition held the sceptre that before 

Fancy had pictured in prophetic skies. 

In the confusion of a changing state 

He dared to take the helm, and boldly steer 

On the wild ocean of a troubled age 

With revolution's noisy storm above, 

And faction's waves below. The will to dare 

Is a charmed talisman to win success. 



CHANGE. 113 

The world gives place to him that dares to take it, 

Denying name and trust of leadership 

To careful prudence or slow steps of wisdom, 

To cast them down before the resolute foot 

That leaps unshrinking to the front of perils. 

His star of fortune burned above his head, 

And led him ever onward. He achieved 

Beyond cloud-painted visions of his youth 

And castles built of unsubstantial air. 

What youth had deemed above ev'n daring's reach, 

Was now within his grasp — more than a king 

When conquered nations bent before his knee. 

But on these kingly fortunes fell a change : 

The star of destiny, on which his heart 

Rested in superstitious homage of belief, 

Grew pale, and flickered, as it sunk from sight, 

Hiding its beams in crimson-tinted snows. 

To rise again with cold, despairing ray 

On Waterloo's red field ; and there eclipsed, 

Shine fortune on him from the skies no more. 

He rose from nothing to the greatest height 

Of worldly power, — he rose to sink again. 

Beat down beneath misfortune's rapid blows. 
10* 



114 CHANGE. 



Power, empire, honors — all were stripped away, 

Disgraced and banished from his native land, 

Like fettered lion, must he languish out 

His heart in weariness, or beat the bars 

In savage fury of his wild despair. 

How better far, on field of Waterloo, 

When Fortune fled, and cast his eagles down, 

Have gathered round him broken ranks of war, 

And, in one final charge on England's squares. 

Retrieved the field, or died a warrior's death : 

His shroud, the flag, whose bright and silken folds 

Had waved his victories on famous fields ! — 

Nay, man makes not his lines of destiny; 

Draws not the figure of each act of Change : 

Defeat or victory — a prize or shame — 

Master or fugitive — a throne or chains — 

As Fortune turns her wheel ! From greatest height 

Is most disastrous fall ; then happy he. 

Perchance, who, little rising, little risks. 



CHANGE. 115 



XV. 



Each of the world's uncounted multitude 
That breathes to-day sweet breath of vital air, 
And feels life's stir of passions, be he rude 
In unlearned thought, or wise beyond compare, 
A naked savage in his wild barbarity. 
Or many-titled doctor of philosophy — 
Each in his place of time and circumstance 
Marks the unfolding of life's history; 
Thrills with expectance of impending chance 
And all the wonder of his mystery. 
For each, yet with a marvellous variance, 
Life runs its course along one common way : 
My joys and pangs have countless millions known, 
And millions yet to be shall make my hopes and fears 
their own. 

A mother looks with wistful wondering 
In her child's infant face, and while she soothes 



ii6 CHANGE. 

His restless murmuring-, fondly speculates 
On what the future hath in store for him : 
In the sweet beauty of his baby smile 
Sees promise of a bright prosperity ; 
Kisses his chubby hands, and dreams of fortunes 
Beyond the luck of all his ancestry 
Waiting her darling in the coming years. 
So Eve, perchance, a glorious life imagined 
For Cain, the first-born of the sons of men 
And first of murderers, as he lay, a cherub, 
In smiling innocence in her fond arms ; 
And so the Hebrew mother of the traitor 
Among the twelve dreamed that her son might win 
The plaudits of the world. The morn of life! 
What countless possibilities appear 
Awaiting him whose little, untried feet 
Press on life's threshold ! — will he win ? or fail 
Amid the changes of his swift career 
From cradle to the grave? His infancy 
Is passed in prattle, wonder, laughter, shouts, 
'A few half-smiling tears. The magical touch 
Of Change soon brings to his bright, laughing eyes 
A look of thought; his golden hair grows dark; 



CHANGE. 117 

The dimples disappear from his round cheeks ; 

And the fond mother sees with smiHng pride 

Her baby grown a tall and manly youth. 

He feels the change with many a tingling thrill 

Of quick emotion. In his bounding heart 

A hundred sanguine hopes with clamorous cries 

Shout happy fortunes. Life, that in childhood's eyes 

Seemed a long stretch of unknown galleries 

Immersed in gloom, by strange enchantment now, 

Responsive to his own awakenings 

And new, mysterious birth of intuitions, 

Catches bright lustre from his glowing thoughts. 

And shines illumined like a summer-dawn 

With rosy light, — then casts each veiling shadow 

Of morning twilight, and arrays fair shapes 

In charms and gay enticements of delight. 

As if the signal-bell had loudly rung 

In life's great theatre, the curtain lifts. 

And shows a marvellous scene, as beautiful 

As new; on which not only his glad eyes 

May gaze, but his elastic footsteps tread. 

Enraptured doth he pass the golden gate 

Of the enchanted garden of the Hesperides, — 



ii8 CHANGE. 



Enchanted by twin spells of youth and hope. 
The golden fruit hangs yellow o'er his head, 
The dragon sleeps ; he laughs to see the prize 
Within his reach, and bendingr to his hand. 
Yet, ere he plucks, fair Pleasure smiling comes, 
And beckons him to join her laughing train, 
And revel with her and her rosy hours. 
Then buoyant youth in his glad heart exults ; 
The merry dance, the jovial crew, allure ; 
Life's prizes are forgotten in that hour 
Of sweet enchantment and beguiling joys. 
Trampling beneath his hasty, careless steps 
The perfumed roses, he would catch each joy 
That laughing flies, while laughing, he pursues ; 
Turns to each fairy shape that gayly flits 
On summer wing, a bright-hued butterfly ; 
Sleeps amid flowers, to wake, and laugh again, 
And drink to full satiety delight. 
But the gay laugh at length forsakes his lips ; 
The garden blossoms fall from withered boughs ; 
The golden fruit, that dazzled once his eyes, 
Unplucked, neglected, rots upon the ground ; 
Pleasure departs with all her noisy train, 



CHANGE. 119 

A cynic sneer upon each back-turned face ; 

And sweets grow sour : the dragon from his sleep 

Awakes, and Danger threatens in the paths 

Where Pleasure danced with sweet seducing wiles. 

Maturity now gathers up his powers 

To fight the dragon though the guarded prize 

Be lost, and if he win, or if he fail, 

The golden opportunity returns no more, 

That once seemed his. He deems youth's darling 

hopes, 
The vain illusions of green ignorance ; 
Pleasure's bright joys, the tinsel of a show ; 
The garden flowers, rank weeds without a use ; 
Beauty too often falsehood's painted mask. 
Strong in himself, he sets his limb and brain 
Against the powers that be ; but, while he boasts 
Of robust strength, feels Time's so heavy hand 
On his strong limbs, and the firm muscles shrink, — 
On his wise brain, and memory vainly seeks 
To hold the thought in which his thought was 

strong. 
While yet he strives to re-collect his strength, 
Hears his grandchildren prattling of his age ; 



I20 CHANGE, 



Strokes his gray beard, and tells the youngsters tales 

Of what their grandsire did; sleeps in his chair 

In dozing dulness while quick-footed hours 

Run past him ; wakes to prattle like a child, 

To laugh again, a caricature of childhood. 

With little, merry laughers round his knee ; 

But sleeps at length more soundly, and is laid 

With funeral honors in abiding bed 

Of garden mould ; — on which perhaps is set 

A monumental stone whose cold, deep-chiselled 

words 
Record his name and age, or haply make 
A line or two of title, place, or rank, — 
On which his children gaze complacently, — 
Or scrap of verse which soon becomes antique. 
And makes the curious reader smile the while 
He ponders of the frail mortality of men 

" Life is no little thing. O tell me not, 
Man is a worm conceived of crumbling dust, 
And fragile as its atoms ! Lo, I breathe ! 
And the sweet breath that fills my rising breast 
Sends joy with life through every quickening pulse. 



CHANGE. 121 

Bright fancies crowd in my conceptive brain, 

And fashion thoughts that rise on heaven-born wings 

So far above the narrow walls that hold 

This organism of dust, that I forget 

My habitation is a group of cells, 

A walking figure, an automaton 

Wound up to run a course of fourscore years ; 

While in my heart beat such ecstatic throbs 

Of sympathy with grand ideals, that life 

Is lifted to their levels. Not a worm ! 

The thing of dust compounded, and no more. 

Can never rise above his native dust 

Save as the moth may flap his shining wings : 

But I have higher wisdom than the laws 

Of this organic dust could give, and Nature whispers : 

This human wisdom is the bright crown-jewel 

Of my inherited kingdom, to whose halls 

This shape of earth is but the narrow portal." 

So speaks gay Health, Come to his darkened room, 

And hear the invalid on his bed of pain : 

" O weary hours, how slow ! — how slow you move ! 

Your feet were quick to dance in days of health, 

But now you linger as enamored of Pain. 



122 CHANGE. 



You would not stop to toy with bright-eyed Pleasure; 

Now will you stay to dally with Disease? 

What an unworthy thing is weary life ! 

How poor a creature, man ! Imprisoned thus, 

A wretched victim in a torture-chamber, 

I feel the cruel rack of pitiless pain 

Distress each nerve and fibre of my body, 

More sensitive to anguish than in health 

They ever thrilled to the delights of pleasure. 

Ah ! once I dreamed my soul was set above 

The organism of life in such high place, 

Its calm serenity might be unmoved 

Although Disease, with cruel vulture-beak, 

Should make each delicate nerve his shrinking prey — 

Alas f Serenity deserts me now ; 

And many fears and doubts, that long ago 

Were laid to rest by wise philosophy, 

Come darkly back, their wide, distended shapes 

Casting disturbing shadows on my couch. 

Weird Fancy, that in days of better health 

Built up enchanted palaces of hope. 

Now pictures sombre halls of darkening gloom, 

Or frights me with the grave's deep, narrow walls." 



CHANGE. 123 

So groans the sick man from his weary couch, 
Till wilder phantoms come to chase away 
Each reasonable thought, surrounding him 
With all the strange, fantastic crew of shapes 
Hot Fever brings in her attendant train. 
Frightful and motley in confusion mixed, 
A dance of demons, clown, and harlequin. 



124 CHANGE. 



XVI. 

Is it a pleasant country where we go 

When this Hfe ends ? I would believe it so; 

Nor terrify my soul with bugbear fear, 

Or fancied torture, anguish, sorrow, woe, 

Of which, alas ! we have sufficient here. 

Although the unseen world hath gloomy gate, 

About whose portal many terrors wait, 

I love to think, the painful threshold passed, 

A better dwelling will appear at last : 

If not the wondrous city we are told 

Hath shining streets adorned and paved with gold, 

A land where w^e with loving friends may be. 

Our lifted souls more pure and clear to see 

The beautiful and true in God's high ministry. 

The strife is over, and multitudinous phases 
Of life concluded ; silent, cold, lies death 



CHANGE, 125 

In rigid lines o'er which pale Beauty hovers 
In fond remembrance of the parted spirit 
Till frighted by Decay. No power remains 
To stir again the nicely-fashioned nerves, 
Flashing intelligence to intellect, 
Or bringing back the ready mind's response. 
The mechanism of muscle, frame of bone, 
Sinews, cells, tissues, blood, veins, arteries, 
Are perfect ; but that weird invisibility, 
The soul, hath fled the pulseless shape of clay. 
Relieved of tenancy, the empty house, — 
Its walls of flesh no longer held upright 
By mystic agency of vital fires, — 
Returns again to kindred clay of earth, 
Resolving into native elements, 
A pile of dust that Nature's artist hand 
May touch anew, and model into forms 
Of nice organic structure, which a breath 
May thrill, life animate, and mind control. 
Again to die, to be by death renewed. 

But whither goes the earth-enfranchised soul ? 

None may disclose the secret of its flight, 
II* 



126 CHANGE, 

Hidden behind tear-sprinkled, gloomy gates 

That cannot be repassed. Why would we know 

Our future dwelling and our future lot? 

Why seek to put aside the veil that hides 

The change from life to death ? An idle wish 

Whose gratifying might belittle life, 

Poor in its contrast with the life to be — 

Often most poor in its most fortunate light ; 

But, ah, how shrunken might it seem to us 

In the effulgence of the clearer future ! 

In that last hour when pitiless Death shall come, 

Blighting the body with his withering touch. 

The secret may be known. Though death's dark 

gates 
Close on mortality with a dull clang. 
Beyond their portal the freed soul may spring, 
The infant creature of another world. 
Perhaps new dressed in shape and organism 
For onward journey of another stage 
In the far pilgrimage of human souls. 

Death, thy funereal curtain, hung between 
Man and his future, hides with sable folds 



CHANGE. 127 

A multitude of scenes ! The unseen world, 
As Faith, or Hope, or legends picture it, 
Is set beyond the last momentous change 
Life's delicate organism of sense can feel. 
How many dreams of strained, conceptive fancy, 
Visions evoked from fevered brain of zeal. 
Are placed beyond the threshold of this life ! 
Thrilled with an inspiration, Fervor paints 
With daring touch the glorious halls of Heaven 
And the new life, from death reanimate. 
After the promptings of a fond desire, 
Fancy's bright tints, or ecstasy's delirium ; 
And thinks the picture by a hand divine ; — 
But always Change ; the fatal door once passed, 
New life and garments clothe the translated soul. 
The unseen world — to one 'tis like a dream : 
Full of vague shadows, thin, phantasmal shapes 
Dim and mysterious on a bank of clouds. 
Another sees it with Faith's trustful eyes. 
As clearly shown as face of household friend. 
Its outlines firm as letters cut in stone. 
Unto a third it blazes like the sun, 
A splendor dazzling with effulgent light 



128 CHANGE. 



Too bright to look upon ; earth-atomed eyes 
And brain of clay too weak to bear the beams 
That broadly stream from fountain-head of truth. 

The din of arms rang through the ancient North ; 
And blue-eyed Norsemen cased gigantic limbs 
In panoply of war. Their war-god, Odin, 
Breathed on the blast mysterious messages 
That stirred the hearts of warriors. From his brow 
The fierce berserker swept his uncombed hair 
That hung its tangled, tawny masses down 
His brawny shoulders and gigantic breast, 
And lifted upward eyes that gleamed in light 
Of frenzied zeal. He saw above him blaze 
Walhalla's halls, where, clad in gleaming steel, 
Were met the heroes of his ancestry. 
Tall chiefs whose swords had cut the shields of kings. 
Upon the swan's-bath with their dragon beaks 
Defied the Storm-king and his dash of waves. 
Upon vast tables spreads a mighty feast. 
The marvellous boar's flesh and the crooked horns 
Foaming with fragrant mead, — glad healths go round, 
And the huge feasters shout together, " Skoal !" 



CHANGE. 129 

The Northman's stormy heaven of gods and heroes 

Saved him from Niflheim, from the gloomy Hela, 

From famine, misery, and dread abode 

In the deep cave of thick and hungry fogs. 

A savage creed, by cruel legends taught. 

Filled his barbaric heart with stormy joys ; 

Drowned Pity's pleading voice in war's alarms ; 

Drove the berserker, like a demon, forth, 

The frenzied zealot of the savage North, 

Who wooed grim Death, — to him, a lovely bride, — 

As on the spears he rushed, and shouting fell. 

That, from wide-gaping wounds, his ghost might 

spring 
To high Walhalla, and of Odin claim 
A feaster's bench in his great banquet hall. 

A change of scene — the clash of noisy cymbals 
And piercing notes of Moorish music ring 
Wildly among the fig-tree groves that skirt 
The shining walls of some old Syrian town. 
Behold the swarthy Arabs how they ride 
On their fleet steeds : a sudden locust-flight 
That stops to devastate, then on again 

F* 



I30 CHANGE. 



To conquests new ! Beneath the holy crescent 

To die is gain ; for Allah's prophet points 

To golden seats and sensual joys that wait 

The true believer in that blissful heaven 

Holy Mohammed hath proclaimed to men. 

The glow of wild fanaticism shines 

In the keen Arab's face ; his black eyes gleam ; 

He waves his tall lance; urges with lithe limbs 

His foam-flecked steed; and rides as joyfully 

To death as, marching through dry wastes of desert, 

The thirsty camels come to some cool spring. 

In his death hour he sees the graceful forms 

Of lovely houries whose soft, snowy arms 

Lift him from Earth ; the ardent joys of sense, 

Wine-cups that sparkle, love-enticing maidens. 

Possess his passing soul. The Earth recedes 

From his dim sight ; but not one last regret 

Bids him delay; for Allah's kingdom dawns 

Upon him, and he hails the joyful morn • 

Gladly as guest, invited to a feast, 

Crossing the threshold, sees a well-spread board. 

Bright lights, and all the pleasant garniture. 

Promising sense and appetite delight. 



CHANGE. 131 

Inspired by faith, the Hindoo casts himself 
Before the car of Vishnu, his great god, 
Preserver of the world and of the soul 
That dares to seek him at the gates of death. 
As the freed spirit leaves his mangled form 
Visioned delights await him in the sky : 
Delightful groves, bright crystal streams, and lakes 
With pearl-embedded strands ; o'er fragrant waves 
The lotus-blossoms float, and gay-winged birds 
That carol songs of love, flit radiantly — 
Such is the vision greets his glazing eyes, 
His dear reward for sacrifice of life. 

The dying Christian turns his thoughts from Earth, 
And as, with weary ebb, his life goes out. 
Looks to the home his Father and his God 
Hath made for him when Death shall bid him come 
To his inheritance, a mansion built 
By Father-love for his eternal rest. 
While chilly tremblings seize his mortal frame, 
Celestial music fills his dying ears : 
The songs of seraphs call him up from Earth, 
And pure-eyed angels on their snowy wings, 
A shining host, attend his flight to Heaven. 



132 CHANGE. 



XVII. 

The untaught savage bows his dusky face 
Low in the dust before the presence dread 
Of some rude-carven idol of his race, 
And of the frightful monster begs a place 
In distant halls of kingdom of the dead. 
Of this same kingdom Plato speculates, 
Conjures philosophy its bounds to trace, 
To paint what change in its dim future waits, 
What glories crown ambition's latest goal 
With death-bought fortunes of the human soul. 
Lo ! here broad-visaged, wise Philosophy 
Meets the brute savage at death's narrow gates, 
And thenceforth, hand-in-hand enforcedly. 
The ill-matched pair go down eternity. 

A sceptic cries, " There is no more beyond 
The present life, nothing to hope, to fear. 



CHANGE. 133 

Death is an end of thinkings, pleasures, pains. 

Who would ask more, would be dissatisfied 

At last with an eternity of life. 

Why drag the thing beyond its natural length 

With fanciful translation to the skies ? 

Would you, like Alexander, be a god. 

Who fill too poorly the small place of man ? 

Have all the ages taught mankind in vain 

By their examples multiplied beyond 

His computation, by analogies 

Plainly presented on the Earth's broad face. 

That posthumous existence is hope's folly ? — 

Poor child of vanity ! — an idle fancy ? 

Man's weak attempt to glorify himself?" 

Then brings he skilful arts of sophistry 

To show that man is nothing, matter nothing, 

Mind incapable of proving its identity, 

Apparent facts, sensations unreliable, 

And his environment, th' unknowable 

Then soul is but a myth ; and what is man ? 
Ephemeral compound of the elements ; 
A happy union of material laws ; 



134 CHANGE. 

A fungus springing from the clods of earth ; 
No higher birth ; no greater destiny : 
And his immortal hopes, his large desires, 
His yearning after God's eternal light 
Of truth, — these then are vain delusions all. 

But yet this accident — this happy chance, — 
Phenomenon of sensitive nonentity, — 
Thing of a base, material ancestry, — 
Mere composite of atoms, — dares to claim 
Beyond the aggregation of its parts ; 
Sets up a court of inquiry, and sends out 
To parent laws an absolute subpoena; 
Tests them with question and nice measurement 
Until it learns the limitation of that 
Hath built its structure and environment; 
Weighs law with law, and traces movement back 
Beyond the active agency of laws ; 
Winning at last the prize of toiling thought, 
A faint conception of some lesser parts 
Of the great scheme of matter, force, and life, 
Of which its parent laws are but blind servants. 
Can a created thing so far surpass 



CHANGE. 135 



Its limited creators, and enjoy 

A reach beyond the makers of its Hfe ? 

Whence can it have enlargement of their powers ? 

Can laws create a thing to question laws ? 

Out of an earthen jar a genius rise 

As in the fable of th' Arabian tale ? 

So strange a thought mocks our credulity, 

Less easy of belief than Zeal's great schemes. 

The bright, elaborate picturings of Faith, 

The grandest altar-piece her hand hath wrought, 

The warmest coloring by Fancy laid, 

The richest imagery of impassioned thought. 

The lily rises from the lap of Earth 
To burst in golden sunshine swollen buds. 
And blushing yield to her bright bridegroom, day. 
In soft profusion wealth of virgin bloom. 
A delicate commingling of soft tints, 
Graceful perfection of the lines of shape. 
Blend them together into loveliness ; — 
Yet hath the flower no beauty. The calm ox, 
Cropping the young and tender blades of grass, 
Lifts not his stupid head and great, slow eyes 



136 CHANGE. 



To gaze enamored of the lovely bloom 

That loads the lily's stem ; he thinks indeed 

The sweet, short grasses are more admirable 

Than all the bloom of lilies. Whence is this ? 

Here are the lines of grace, the exquisite tints, 

And here the nice machinery of the eye 

To catch the mingling of those shapes and hues ; 

Yet no effect of beauty. Not in flower 

Or beast exists the precious mystery 

That heaves man's bosom, and excites his thought, 

When he beholds the lily's loveliness. 

The mystery of beauty is a light 

That flashes on his brain at the appeal 

Of Nature's picturings, as if he caught 

An inspiration of the master-thought 

Of which all Nature is the imagery. 

No consciousness of pleasing tint, or grace 

Of perfect form, exists beneath sweet bloom. 

Its language is the nice concept of man ; 

Speaks in his soul, not in the lovely plant. 

His recognition of a higher thought 

Than useful purpose, or economy 

In grouping atoms, is the blossom's story, 



CHANGE. 137 

Its sweetest whisper. Though an organism 
Reaching to this expression of a thought, 
A rich vitality compelling Earth 
To place in such exactness every part, 
Are tied together in the lily's stem. 
They give no hint of inborn, native thought. 
The movements are exact ; no light caprice 
Puts forth rose-blossoms on a lily's stem. 
Or changes tints of bloom from pink to blue, 
Or blushes brighter beauty in the praise 
Of admiration's eye. From Earth's rank soil 
The plant is reared, grows, blossoms, fades, and dies. 
Without an act of conscious energy; 
Concrete of laws, but an objective thing; 
Matter impelled, not a self-sentient force. 
And will man say that he is like the flower, 
A choice production of the fertile earth. 
On which is written a mysterious legend 
Bearing intelligence between unknowns ? 
No ; 'tis a desecration of himself 
At which his intellect its protest makes 
In every exercise of conscious thought. 

12* 



138 CHANGE. 



Away vain doubts that clashing creeds suggest ! 
And if I may not cHmb on Jacob's ladder 
Where every step is a disputed dogma, 
Yet am I not content to sleep in dust 
Forever, only a forgotten shape 
Of Earth, that chance hath built of restless atoms. 
Here in close confines of small space and time, 
Mocked by the bickering forms of constant change, 
And haunted by grim doubts of that desire 
That fills my bosom, lest it be a strain 
Of siren melody, and not the voice 
Of truth ; yet is this life the worthier, nobler, 
That it must battle with strange mysteries. 
And bravely win its crowning victories 
By patient toil and wise intelligence. 
Entangled in the labyrinth of Change, 
While Time's quick tumult whirls and hurries on, 
We yet may work life's problem so far out: 
Not to confound the sentient force of thought 
That finds expression in mind's organism, 
With matter, — though its law-thrilled atomies 
Put on a mockery of supreme power. 



CHANGE. 139 



Wearing the semblance of a potency 
Inherent in their substance, when the while 
They are but senseless and objective points 
On which is pressed the moving Power of life. 



I40 CHANGE. 



XVIII. 

When the stormy Ocean with unceasing roar, 

Like a shouting Titan, thunders on its shore, — • 

When the hum of Summer singeth busily, 

In the storm or murmur, what doth Nature say? 

Is it matter crying in its agony? 

Is it atoms sighing in their harmony ? 

Is it but the grinding of untiring wheels ? 

Is it the rejoicing grateful Nature feels ? 

Ask thy soul these questions, and her answer hear : 

*' For each sound Earth utters thou hast a tuneful 

ear." 
But much noise and turbulence tell not grandest acts; 
Under hush of silence Earth brings forth great facts. 
Let not noise disturb thee, nor night's silence lone ; 
Let not din perturb thee, — Nature and God are one. 

Search where we will, abroad, within ourselves, 
Through thought's extremest reach, there is no thing 



CHANGE. 141 



In which material elements combine, 
Or composite of matter and of laws, — 
No substance, be it simple or compound, 
The greatest mass of aggregated atoms, 
Or one poor, individual entity- 
Invisible through extreme littleness, 
A minute molecule, or monster sun. 
But through each instant of advancing time 
It thrills and dances in the acts of Change. 

What doth not change ? What is there constant ever ? 
The laws of God that vivify the world ; 
That drive vexed matter through unceasing Change ; 
That mould the crystal into angles fixed; 
That organize with vegetative life 
Forest and field, clothing bare ribs of Earth 
With many-tinted, flower-embroidered robes ; 
That by their impulse fill with vital force 
Earth, air, and ocean — a prolific brood ; 
That give to every atom movement, work ; 
That build each short-lived age from crumbled dust 
Of all the past ; and shape each new-born thing 
Of that which hath so often been unshaped, 



142 CHANGE. 



That form is but the garment of Dame Change, 
As often out of fashion, and renewed, 
As the gay robes of a capricious lady 
Each hour new-toileted ; — yet in themselves 
Are laws immutable : their varied actions 
New combinations of unvarying powers. 

What last condition waits to crown the atom 
When all its restless laws at length shall sleep, 
Is past our knowledge ; but so grand a march 
Must be to some great end. And so of man : 
His reach of thought goes out so far beyond 
His little place of time and circumstance, 
That every germ of truth he gathers here 
Is full of promise, and unless it wither 
Into a falsehood, breaking each relation 
It bears to him and all, must still abide 
With him, and grow to bloom and perfect fruitage 
Beyond this ripple of the sea of Change 
In clearer light and purer airs of Heaven. 

Change is the movement of the Master's hand, 
And constant purpose is divinely whispered 



CHANGE. 143 



Beneath its touch : so are we ever drawn 

By what is best in us to what is best 

And wisest over all. If all too slow 

We seem to come to good, the scheme extends 

So far beyond our narrow symbol, Time, 

That in eternity the fast and slow 

Are merged and one ; and even Change 

May there at length exhaust its energies 

When the full purpose of its course is won. 



THE END. 




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